Skip to content

Update fp-016-maintenance.md summary fix & header standardization #2890

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
nataled merged 2 commits into from
Apr 7, 2026
Merged

Update fp-016-maintenance.md summary fix & header standardization #2890

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
65d3ea3
Update fp-016-maintenance.md summary fix & header standardization
nataled Apr 7, 2026
dd15c03
Merge branch 'master' into nataled-patch-5
nataled Apr 7, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
11 changes: 7 additions & 4 deletions principles/fp-016-maintenance.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -8,22 +8,25 @@ title: Maintenance (principle 16)

The wording of this principle is still in progress.

## Summary and Purpose
## Summary

The ontology needs to reflect changes in scientific consensus to remain accurate over time.
The ontology SHOULD reflect changes in scientific consensus to remain accurate over time, and MUST be responsive to community requests.

[This check is automatically validated.](checks/fp_016)
## Purpose

## Implementation
## Recommendations and Requirements

Ideally, the maintainer of an ontology SHOULD actively monitor for any changes in scientific consensus, but--at a minimum--the maintainer MUST respond to requests from the community pointing out such changes in accordance with the [Responsiveness principle](http://obofoundry.org/principles/fp-020-responsiveness.html). Tentatively, we consider scientific consensus to be reached if multiple publications by independent labs over a year come to the same conclusion, and there is no or limited (<10%) dissenting opinions published in the same time frame. In cases when an area remains controversial, and no consensus is reached, then it is up to the ontology maintainer to either leave out the controversial term, or pick a viewpoint for practical considerations, and note the presence of controversy in an editor note.

## Implementation

## Examples

## Counter-Examples

## Criteria for Review

The developers of the ontology need to include a statement specifying how they are planning to maintain the ontology. We expect that an ontology will be maintained for at least 3 years from the time of acceptance.
[This check is automatically validated.](checks/fp_016)

<Category:Principles> <Category:Accepted>
Loading