Tony,
It would be a mistake to try to come up with the Definitive Vocabulary of Astronomy, especially an IAU sanctioned one. That is simply not the task, as I see it, for the IVOA. We are exploring avenues of processes and services and trying to come up with workable mechanisms. We need a stable vocabulary that remains stable while we hook up these services one to the other and test them out. Perhaps underscores (eg gamma_ray) will turn out to be a terrible choice and maybe camelback (eg GammaRay) is even worse (probably it doesn't matter). Maybe we need an extremely exacting subclassification scheme, or maybe we need an extremely loose set of vague relational terms instead (probably we will need both).
So, the best thing to do is for this working group (semantics R-us) to take a stab at a terminology so we can get on to the real part of making applications. We can then present it, in the normal course of achieving Recommendation status, to the entire IVOA. And let all of the application makers, be forewarned that the vocabulary is likely to get tugged around on occasions (hopefully not too often). And one of those occasions will be when the IAU puts its stamp on things. But I would not expect that to happen for a number of years.
Ed
Tony Linde wrote:
> Back to being facetious? J
>
> It pays to check these things - I've had efforts derailed in the past for
> not including all the appropriate stakeholders. And I assumed the list of
> stakeholders in a SV would be rather larger than the IVOA.
>
> T.
>
> From: owner-semantics-at-eso.org [mailto:owner-semantics-at-eso.org] On Behalf Of
> Rob Seaman
> Sent: 14 September 2007 16:30
> To: semantics-at-ivoa.net
> Subject: Re: SV: do we need it?
>
> Tony inquires:
>
>
> Is there some IAU (or similar) group we ought to engage with to ensure that
> this effort is welcomed by astronomers?
> The IVOA is that IAU group. We fall under Commission 5. The "O" in IVOA is
> there for a reason.
>
>
>
> Rob
>