Terms Wikis are the mechanism that the CTWG recommends for working groups, task forces, and similar groups to manage terms and their definitions so we can produce glossaries and other documents that cite and source terminology with care.

Introduction

Terms are words or phrases that label formally defined concepts. You can manage terms in lots of ways – everything from writing them down on post-it notes to putting them in a spreadsheet to buying fancy professional terminology software. You want something cheap and easy, with minimal setup and minimal learning curve – right? But you'd also like to be able to be able to formally release and version your glossaries, and see how terms are related, and cite sources, and reference terms from other places, too...

We think you want something cheap and easy, with minimal setup and minimal learning curve. We can give you that, while still providing some very sophisticated features that you might eventually need. To do it, we need to teach you about how to create and maintain a special type of wiki. Don't worry – it's easy.

(Note from Rieks: need to justify "scope-specfic" – why, and what we mean by "scope") This page describes an approach to creating and maintaining scope-specific terminology glossaries using GitHub wikis. This approach is being developed by the Concepts and Terminology WG (CTWG) to serve any ToIP-related glossary community—any community of interest or a community of practice—that needs an easy, human-friendly way to document and manage the terms they need to communicate effectively both within and outside of their community.

Why A Wiki?

This definition of a wiki is from the best know wiki in the world, Wikipedia:

A wiki (/ˈwɪki/ (listen) WIK-ee) is a hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience directly using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.

The basic idea of a glossary wiki is simply a wiki whose scope is a specific set of terms defined by a specific glossary community that, taken together, form a glossary for that community.

Why GitHub Wikis?

There are several reasons the CTWG chose GitHub to host our glossary wiki capability:

1. GitHub is the standard back-end repository system used by Linux Foundation projects (of which the ToIP Foundation is one).
2. GitHub has a built-in wiki capability called using GitHub wikis that can be turned on for any GitHub repo.
3. A GitHub repo—and its inherent access control capabilities—provides a standard, widely accessible open source tool for each glossary community to manage its own glossary wiki.
4. A GitHub wiki is stored in Markdown documents in GitHub just like all other GitHub documentation and can be accessed and managed programmatically via the GitHub APIs.
5. The CTWG is developing tooling, called the ToIP Term tool—that will be able to automatically ingest the contents of glossary wikis that follow the CTWG glossary wiki guidelines into a shared terminology corpus. This is where the CTWG and the participating glossary communities can add value by mapping terms and concepts across different glossary communities in order to increase the overall communication value of the terms to everyone.

Directory of Glossary Wiki Documentation Pages

To avoid confusion, the CTWG maintains documentation describing glossary wikis on this wiki (the main Confluence wiki that serves the entire ToIP Foundation). The current available documentation includes:

1. (Nicky's suggestion: workflow))
2. How to start a new glossary wiki for your glossary community. <== THIS PAGE TO BE DEVELOPED BY CTWG VOLUNTEERS
3. Understanding the template for a glossary wiki page. <== THIS PAGE TO BE DEVELOPED BY CTWG VOLUNTEERS
4. How to insert links into glossary wiki pages (or any document you write). <== THIS PAGE TO BE DEVELOPED BY CTWG VOLUNTEERS
5. How your glossary wiki works with the CTWG ToIP Term tool. <== THIS PAGE TO BE DEVELOPED BY CTWG VOLUNTEERS
6. <insert additional glossary wiki documentation pages here>

Directory of Glossary Wikis Maintained Directly by the CTWG

1. ctwg-terms is the CTWG's own glossary wiki, i.e., for the terms we use to describe "the terminology of terminology".
2. toip-general-terms is the glossary wiki for terms in general use across the whole of the ToIP community writ large.

Directory of Other Glossary Wikis

Listings are alphabetical order.