[WikiEN-l] Hello

[Marc Riddell]

I don't know that what I am asking for is as complex as your example. Cancer
> Lung cancer. Suicides > Suicides by firearm >> Deaths by firearm. I believe
limiting the number (and specificity) of the subcategories would help to
keep the process within manageable limits.

Marc

> From: Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 20:16:25 +0100
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello
> 
> Sam Korn schreef:
>> On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> I don't understand how it would defeat the purpose of subcats. My goal is to
>>> be able to retrieve lists of persons with like characteristics. Unless a
>>> person is included in a subcategory, they will not be included in that list.
>>> A person who dies from lung cancer, also belongs in the larger list of
>>> persons who died from cancer.
>> 
>> The suggestion is that some kind of tool -- as yet, I believe
>> unwritten -- could generate a list of all members of a category and
>> its subcategories.  I imagine this would suit your purpose.
> 
> Unfortunately, it would not. At least, not completely. Categorization is
> not transitive: if article A is a member of category C, and C is a
> subcat of D, A need not be a member of D. For example: [[Seine]] is in
> [[Category:Paris]], which is in [[Category:Cities in France]], which is
> in [[Category:France]], which is in [[Category:Republics]], which
> ultimately is a subcat of [[Category:Thought]].
> 
> But the Seine is not a thought, a republic, or a city in France.
> 
> Categories as implemented now have mixed meanings: they can describe
> "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" connections. See earlier
> discussions on this list in September 2004 and June 2006
> (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2006-June/048183.html).
> 
> Eugene
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