Standard terminologies must provide a stability of definitions. If publications refer to the URI of a term, the link must be semantically stable and be true to the definition intended by the author.
That said, with minor increments of the standard, definitions of terms can only be broadened or made more explicit, if the original sense of the definition remains valid. The community discussion leading to a refinement of a term should consider this. If a definition changes substantially, it may receive an own URI and replace any redundant or deprecated terms. The deprecated terms will remain available at their original URI.
If alterations in terms lead to incompatibility with previous versions, a new major version of the Trait-data Standard Vocabulary may be issued, providing new versioned URIs for all terms of the standard that have been altered since the previous major version.
Discussions on terms and versions are coordinated in the Github Issues.
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