On Mon, 05 Jun 2006 00:01:26 +0300, Ilmari Karonen wrote:
The problem there, now that I think about it, is that Paris should not be in the category "Paris" (as was pointed out by someone else).
Actually, if we consider "Paris" a thematic category, then it makes sense for Paris to be in it, since it certainly fits the theme.
Heh. Valid point, and it seems that many editors would agree with you.
In fact, we _could_ have a parallel taxonomic category tree that focused solely on geography, with "Districts of Paris" being a subset of "Places in Paris", which in turn is a subset of "Places in France" (but _not_ "Cities in France") and "Places in Europe" and ultimately "Places". So we'd have a tree of taxonomic "Places in [Region]" categories, each one having subcategories named either "[Divisions] in [Region]" or "Places in [Subregion]", with the root of the tree being "Places". (I'm torn on whether we'd need a second-level category "Places on Earth", though.)
[[Category:Subdivisions by country]] does something like that.
The plural/singular distinction may not be ideal, but does feel very natural in many cases. It's not without problems, though: what about, for example, the category "Sheep"?
Now _that_ is fortunately a minor problem. Call one of them "sheep (thematic)" or something. It's not like namespace collisions are unheard of in WP.
Roger