Adding/deleting concepts with multiple schemes and hierarchy in VocBench
Baran Barbarestani
Hi all,
We are working on a taxonomy in VocBench with multiple levels (1–6). We are facing an issue with editing:
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We currently have separate schemes per level. This allows levels to be categorized, but we cannot add or delete concepts in the UI. Editing existing concept properties works.
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From what I understand, VocBench allows only one scheme to carry the hierarchy for editable operations. This seems to prevent adding/deleting concepts when using multiple schemes.
Our goal is:
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Allow all levels to be editable by admins (add/delete concepts).
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Restrict user edits to Level 6 only, while keeping Levels 1–5 read-only.
Questions:
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Is it possible to achieve this setup in VocBench?
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Are there any recommended workarounds for allowing edits across multiple levels while controlling permissions per level?
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!
Best regards,
Baran Barbarestani
Taxonomy Analyst
baran.bar...@randstad.com
stel...@uniroma2.it
Dear Baran,
I’m a little mystified, You already posted such questions and while it is good that now you used a dedicated thread (previously you followed up twice with two other questions after an original post from a colleague of yours, using the same subject), here you are asking questions about the same topic but didn’t follow up on the questions I raised in turn in order to help you (on the second one you asked), while reprised your original set of questions with no sign of acknowledging what was already discussed.
Anyway, let’s try to start afresh:
- I confirm that you can have as many schemes you want and can work on each of them. The only operation that is not allowed is to add concepts if no scheme is selected. This might be debatable (some users might want to develop a schemeless thesaurus) but it’s a good practice to always define a scheme, also because SKOS visualization is strongly based on top concept assertions, so it seemed good to enforce this behavior. We are ready to change this but, until now, everybody seemed to be happy with this :-)
That said, the above is not your case as you are indeed using a lot of schemes so, providing that these schemes are selected, it should be possible to add concepts to them. We have many users adopting even very fine-grained set of schemes on their thesauri, so that’s the first time I hear of such an issue. If you could provide an example, I would be glad to help. One way is to clearly show us the example in the email and, in most cases, that’s enough. Another way, if the first is not enough, is that you share some data. I understand your thesauri might be private and not shareable but, possibly, you can recreate a small case, even with fictious concept names (A, B) and show us the culprit with reference to your shared data - Concerning your goal of allowing only some users to edit the , this can be achieved in at least three ways:
- The official way: Use the multischeme management. Pls check here:
https://vocbench.uniroma2.it/doc/tipsntricks/multischememultitaxonomy.jsf - Working with separated projects and imports: https://vocbench.uniroma2.it/doc/user/namespaces_imports.jsf#imports
i. Create a project with the first 5 levels, editable by reserved users
ii. Create a project, importing the first one and defining specifically the 6th level, allowing all users to edit anything, except that the imported data is read-only. Note that owl:imports now is supported with a special “import from project” that allows continuous updates of the data from imported projects
- Use different working graphs: https://vocbench.uniroma2.it/doc/user/global_data_management.jsf#change_working_graph
you can have the first 5 levels on a certain graph and the 6th level on the main graph associated with the main graph of the project.
Project managers and Administrators can switch working graphs, while all other users cannot. You can also define new roles when you can grant this capability,
Now, the second hypothesis is better recommended when you have portions of a thesaurus using different URIs but, in that case, it might be a very easy solution.
Both the second and third one (well, maybe even the first, I should check it) do not forbid a user from developing a new concept that is, say, on the third level, by extending a concept on the 2nd, but they won’t be allowed to modify the full hierarchy of already defined concepts, reserved to administrators/pms, that corresponds to the first 5 levels. And, in any case, even if on the third level, that concept would be clearly separated from the reserved ones, so that anybody can easily distinguish the addition and, in case, take action on that.
Kind Regards,
Armando
Da: 'Baran Barbarestani' via vocbench-user <vocben...@googlegroups.com>
Inviato: lunedì 9 febbraio 2026 17:24
A: vocbench-user <vocben...@googlegroups.com>
Oggetto: [vocbench-user] Adding/deleting concepts with multiple schemes and hierarchy in VocBench
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