90 Seconds with SharePoint 2010: Who Should Own Terms and Term Sets?

No one wants to “own” terms in a taxonomy, until someone else does, then everyone wants to own it all. How do you solve this sticky political issue?

If you’ve designed taxonomies, you know the situation: Yawns and groans abound when co-workers or clients are asked to take responsibility for creating/owning a term or set of terms in a taxonomy. No one wants extra work. It all seems kind of abstract, really, and potentially messy.

Then some brave soul steps up and takes responsibility for a set of terms, like DOCUMENT TYPE, in a taxonomy. In SharePoint 2010, this could be a Term Set, for example.

All of a sudden, a s—storm of activity and emails happen. “Why does he get to own it? Why isn’t my group involved? We don’t describe it THAT way…”  and on and on.  Bottom line about taxonomies: no one cares until someone cares, then everybody cares. Moving forward with building term sets and terms in SharePoint Term Store, what should you do? Since there are some issues with controlling terms in SharePoint 2010 Term Store (everyone knows that you can simply create your own new label if you don’t’ like someone else’s label with the same name). Here’s a potential way to deal with it: