A murder of crows

[Rob Seaman]

> 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.

- Rob