This is a rare example of an attempt to develop a heterogeneous system of classification for a multi-disciplinary field where participants may be active anywhere from field level to academia or global policy fora. The field in question is land governance. Landvoc, which was initiated by the Land Portal, is based on and linked with Agrovoc, the official thesaurus of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. It has developed a number of extra terms related specifically to land governance which had not been included in Agrovoc(although now are). It has also piloted two attempts at making the vocabualry more inclusive. It worked with Open Data Mekong in a participatory process involving people involved in land issues in Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam in exploring the meaning of certain land terms in local languages and finding and classifying equivalents. It has also worked with Habitat for Humanity in Latin America to understand the different teminology used to describe land issues in new urban areas by technical experts, local government and local communities.
One feature of its approach is a desire to peer review the development of the thesaurus with partgner organisations. This not only provides a level of quality control to the process but, through its invitation to others to collaborate in developing a shared vocabulary, contributes to the development of the 'field' of land governance.