SV: do we need it?

[Andrea Preite Martinez]

Quoting Tony Linde <Tony.Linde at leicester.ac.uk>:

> will the creation of what is termed a Standard
> Vocabulary for astronomy be seen as an arrogant assumption? Is there some
> IAU (or similar) group we ought to engage with to ensure that this effort is
> welcomed by astronomers?

By astronomers?
The SV - as its smaller brother UCD - is not meant "directly" for  
astronomers, but to make the VO more inter-operable, exactly as the  
UCDs.
Btw, in the draft it is clearly said that the SV :
"provides the VO with a common set of standard tokens for astronomical  
objects, processes, events, observations, instruments, and concepts  
which are likely to be needed within all VO contexts."

Astronomers had and have their astronomical vocabularies. They had the  
IAU thesaurus, discontinued in '95 (or '97?) for the retirement of the  
curators.
If you are looking for a Standard Astronomical Vocabulary, please  
start from there: you'll find also basic relationships as broader,  
narrower, etc. between terms. If a SAV is what you want to build (but  
is this within the scope of the IVOA? - genuine question, I'm not  
sarcastic) just refresh the IAU thesaurus with the terms and concepts  
that appeared in the last 10 years.  Gamma Ray Bursts, to quote one.
By the way, the astronomers didn't care much for a Thesaurus,  
otherwise it wouldn't had be abandoned 10 years ago.
What astronomers have today is a list (I should say: a few lists, see  
my note on  Astronomical Keywords) of keywords they use to tag their  
papers. Far from a SAV!

Since 2005 we are not discussing SAV: we are discussing of how to  
extend and overcome the limitations in context that are built-in the  
UCDs. These limitations and the need to overcome them were put forward  
not by the UCD wg, not by me, but by those who needed to make  
interoperable not only "quantities" using UCDs, but object types,  
phenomena, instruments, simulations, etc.

Andrea
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