Decide how to manage controlled vocabularies

[tucotuco]

An early preference would be a FusionTable (FT) with columns:

term - the name of the field that has the controlled vocabulary
value - the field in which to put a "valid" value of the term
definition - the meaning of the value for the term

So, represented as csv, a FT might have the following entries:
term,value,definition
origin,1,native,occurs naturally without having been introduced
origin,2,reintroduced,occurs in historically native range after having been reintroduced there
origin,3,introduced,occurs in a non-native area via human-mediated introduction
origin,4,vagrant,occurs in non-native area temporarily by natural dispersal
origin,5,uncertain, not vagrant (1, 2, or 3)
origin,6,uncertain, maybe vagrant,(1, 2, 3, or 4)

[gaurav]

I like this. Do we want a name for each value as well ("native", "reintroduced", etc.) or would it be more useful to provide the complete definition to the user when they're entering data into the system or searching?

[tucotuco]

Hmm. My example leaves a little to be desired and would lead to confusion. I really did mean that there would be just three fields, but the third field, with the definitions, contains commas, so those should have been in quotes. Don't know if a single word version is necessary or not. It sort of depands on what we want to do about searching this field. If the code suffice, then the word versions aren't needed. Otherwise, sure we could add a field for the label or whatever you might want to call it.