Terms are words or phrases that act as labels for formally defined concepts. "MRI" is a medical term; "Habeas corpus" is a legal term; and so on. Any time a group of experts invents, innovates or standardizes, they need a terminology as a tool for themselves, and a corresponding glossary (one of their work products) that helps them communicate about their work. Usually, the group will typically seek to use terms that have already defined in specifications, standards, dictionaries, or glossaries that already exist. However, they will also typically need to define an additional set terms specific to their group. Several TOIP working groups (WGs) and task forces (TFs) have already expressed this need.
One of the objectives of CTWG is to provide TOIP WGs and TFs with:
To meet this need, the CTWG is introducing terms wikis. Terms wikis are simple websites that allow collaborative editing in a browser. They meet the "easy and cheap" criteria while allowing some sophisticated features under the hood. Think Google Docs, but with slightly more structure – or Wikipedia, but a whole lot simpler. You can learn how to use them in 5 minutes.
A terms wiki is owned by a community of interest or a community of practice (a terms community) that needs precise alignment about its mental models and the words that describe them (a terminology). In TOIP, a terms community typically corresponds to a Working Group or a Task Force. However our terms wiki tooling can also be used by groups outside of ToIP that wish to join our overall terminology community. Sometimes a single group needs to undertake multiple projects where each requires its own terminology. That's fine too. Whenever a terminology is internally cohesive and managed by a crisply delineated set of stakeholders, we call the context in which it lives a scope. Every scope needs a glossary that lists the set of terms pertinent to that scope (i.e. its terminology), as well as its own terms wiki that contains the definitions of the terms that are specific to this scope.
The following diagram illustrates the relationship between terms wikis and glossaries based on them.
The CTWG doesn't control or approve terms wikis. However, we do attempt to track them, as a general service to the public. If you have a terms wiki to add, please let us know. Here are terms wikis (and glossaries) we know about:
Tag and Link | Community | Description | Month Started | Glossary Links |
---|---|---|---|---|
#ctwg | Concepts and Terminology Working Group (CTWG) | Terminology for the CTWG tools, terms wiki design, curation, and our own documentation. | May 2021 | |
#toip-general | the greater TOIP ecosystem | terms used throughout TOIP contexts | May 2021 | |
#essiflab | eSSIF Lab | Terminology and mental models that have been developed in the EU eSSIF-Lab project. | May 2021 | provisional |
#ghp | ToIP Interoperability Working Group for Good Health Pass | Global interoperability of health certificates and travel passes with a focus on COVID-19 | April 2021 | 1.0 |
#sovrin | Sovrin Foundation | Governance and operation of the Sovrin Foundation and Sovrin ledger | January 2017 | 3 |
#yoma-gf | Yoma Governance Framework WG | July 2021 | ||
This definition of a wiki is from the best known 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 terminology wiki is simply a wiki in which a set of terms is being defined by a specific (project of a) community of interest or a community of practice (scope), for its own purposes. This terminology will typically be made available through a glossary for that community.
There are several reasons the CTWG chose GitHub to host our glossary wiki capability: