Andrew Gray, 17/08/2015 13:29:
In some ways, merging seems more elegant. We do have fairly good gender metadata (and getting better all the time!), so we can still do gender-specific relationship searches where needed. It also avoids having to force a binary gender approach - we are in the odd position of being able to give a nuanced entry in P21 but can only say if someone is a "sister" or "brother".
I think this is quite important. I think properties should focus on one thing at a time and there is no need to state both gender and family relationship in the same statement.
Also, are we really sure we don't currently have linguistic issues? I bet there is at least one language in the world where "sister" and "brother" are not two distinct words.
Nemo