[Voevent-core] Fwd: standard vocabulary

[Rob Seaman]

On May 16, 2006, at 6:37 AM, Lars Lindberg Christensen wrote:

> I cannot imagine one taxonomy "one size fits all". I completely  
> support the idea of conversion tables between different metadata  
> tag systems (as we have also had to do for the very important IPTC  
> system).

My previous question parallel to this thread went unanswered:

>>> I tried to express the idea of a GRB, and I came up with  
>>> process.variation.burst; em.gamma
>>
>> Could Andrea or Rick (or anybody else) comment on why the latter  
>> should be preferred over simply "GRB" as a class identifier?   
>> Presume there are sound semantic reasons.  What are they?  An  
>> analogy from a completely different domain might be political  
>> UCDs.  Why prefer something like  
>> "official.elected.executive.chief;country.usa" to "POTUS"?

Note that I wasn't attempting to express an opinion here.  I've read  
through the various UCD documents (and now the AOI proposal), I even  
sat on one or the other (or both) UCD committees, and I don't think a  
clear expression has been presented of the kernel of the idea.  The  
closest is this from the UCD description:

	The idea of building UCDs by combining simple words makes the  
vocabulary less complex and more flexible (cf. "atomic UCDs''  
proposal by G. Rixon).

Is "process.variation.burst; em.gamma" really simpler than "GRB"?  Is  
flexibility always a good thing in a vocabulary?  Doesn't the OED  
exist precisely to limit flexibility?  All I really get out of this  
is a great curiosity about Guy's proposal.

Can someone provide two or three bullets outlining the gist of UCDs?   
Our daily lives are full of acronyms - it is commonplace for  
institutional nomenclature to be so described, i.e., NASA's TLAs.   
Does IVOA gain more by striving against this natural inclination than  
we pay into the bargain?

Rob
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