Ed Shaya wrote:
> It was a poor choice to use GRBs as an example
An example is either typical or atypical. Both provide hooks for exploring the solution space, as your further discussion nicely demonstrates. VO facilities may aim for the typical 90%, but the atypical 10% must ultimately be accommodated.
On the other hand, GRB's are the bread & butter of transient astronomy currently (and one anticipates, for quite some time into the future). I would argue that any definition of same should be driven by our functional needs - not by an annual review style consensus, but by the information practitioners (perhaps outside the domain of astronomy) need to move astronomy forward to the next level of comprehension.
> I also would not underestimate the number of times a term has
> multiple meanings.
Indeed!
> That is unacceptable for us.
Why - and by "us", to what use case(s) are you referring - and what are "we" (in this case, the architecture addressing all supported use cases) going to do about it?