The problem is that in TDWG we have some people writing and using OWL ontologies and we have other people using Excel spreadsheets.  I am fully in support of developing community ontologies.  The challenge is to find a way to help the Excel spreadsheet people start where they are and move towards something more semantically sophisticated.  That's what I'm trying to suggest here.

Hilmar Lapp wrote:

On Oct 3, 2013, at 9:08 AM, Steve Baskauf wrote:

Or use ENVO uris.

Yes, indeed. If they don't exist yet, ask that they do. That's the way to build community ontologies - by a community actively working to make the ontology what it needs it to be.
Well, the problem here is that there is only one ENVO ontology. 

I would consider that a fortunate fact, not a problem.

  There are many systems for defining what a biome is (see wikipedia for examples).

And so there are for what a gene function is, what a disease phenotype is, what an animal anatomy element is, and so on. Yet, for all of these rather domain cross-cutting subject areas, it has been possible for different communities to converge on advancing together one or a few common ontologies. This can require a lot of work, but the eventual pay-off has been huge and is growing. I really don't see why we can't strive for the same for environmental terms and concepts.

-hilmar

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