> a 'vocabulary' turns into a 'thesaurus' as soon as you add broader/
> narrower relations between the terms. Thus^2 whatever arguments
> there are for multiple vocabularies are also arguments for multiple
> thesauri.
So the actual thesaurus is an emergent structure consisting of the whole stack of vocabularies? Zero thesauri would be fine by me. (Even better than collective, plural, or singular is "null".)
> Those arguments are to do with audience (expert vs. non-expert) and
> previous investments (three important journals already have actual
> resources tagged with actual vocabulary items).
So there are a number of curated vocabularies, one of which (the "IAU Thesaurus") is called a thesaurus, but is actually a vocabulary like all the rest?
As far as audience, we should refer to our work products by names designed to reach the non-experts. Experts will be able to use their own inner thesauri to sort out issues of imprecise use of technical nomemclature, while non-experts would only be be confused and turned off on VO by having to use bizarre terms of crafts not their own.