Principle #5 "Scope"

[pbuttigieg]

This principle is sometimes hard to match to ontologies like ENVO: it sounds like a solid scope, but - because of the nature of the entities of interest (e.g. environments) - can creep and lead to shadow hierarchies. We're learning how to avoid these and are happy to give away branches to new groups (FOODON, AgrO, etc), but adding a section on these sort of cases may save some time.

Proposal

• Add a note on hard-to-scope ontologies and what to do about them (including being ready to give branches away)
• Add a note relating scope to precision: an ontology that specifies the content of another, doesn't necessarily have different scope.

Other points? This likely needs some general discussion in Operations...

[nlharris]

This should be added to the agenda for an upcoming OBO operations meeting.

[nicolevasilevsky]

Can note when there is overlapping scope, agreed this is a good idea on the Operations call. @pbuttigieg will put in some text for this proposal.