What's the status of the Vocabulary project?
The BJCP Vocabulary project is an ongoing effort to provide a clear, usable, consistent set of vocabulary terms to assist judges in describing the beers entered in competitions.
The Vocabulary project committee worked for well over two years, and made great progress. Unfortunately, there have also been some bumps along the road to completion.
There was a pilot test website at one time that offered an early version of the vocabulary database, but that site is no longer associated with the BJCP. The prototype application served its purpose, but is not going to be used for the production system.
Please note that the BJCP is not a sponsor of the former vocabulary site, although you may occasionally find it available. Any information found on the former website cannot be assumed to be correct or representing the position of the BJCP. Judges should not rely on that information for educational or training purposes.
Update: September 2013
We had a prior version, with good content, on a system that the BJCP did not control. One of the people working on the project took over that site and basically made it something the BJCP couldn't support or endorse. We recover the BJCP-contributed content, however.
We decided to reuse our content in a commercial wiki product rather than creating our own software. However, our current web host provider either didn't run compatible software with the wiki application, couldn't install the application, or wouldn't give us rights to maintain it (each of those three things happened, in sequence).
We have three separate projects going on now to get the vocab project active:
- We have a new web server on a new hosted provider. We haven't cut over to it yet, since our web system is being redesigned as part of that project.
- We have someone else working to customize the commercial wiki product to meet our needs. He is still working on it, and is almost ready to import the content.
- Someone else is reviewing, editing, and approving the final content, backing out all the various unauthorized edits the original developer made to the content. This is almost done, maybe 85% complete.
We'll need to have all those pieces in place before the new system can be active. If #2 and #3 are done before #1 is ready, we can still go live with the wiki application on the new host while our current web server is on the old host.
We may need additional help in reviewing, revising, and expanding content once we're back in operation. Once we have a system active, it will be a project under control of the CEP Directorate. We expect the CEP Director to have someone assigned as an ongoing lead for the product, with whatever supporting staff as necessary to work the follow-on tasks they identify.
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