On 4/10/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
A problem right now is that our category system is structured but what exactly category membership MEANS is kind of fuzzy. Is it IS-A, IS-RELATED-TO, HAS-A, or what? Many of our categories start off as one type of relationship, but which mutates as it goes deeper. For example, London IS-A city, but HAS-A bus system.
Yep, and even the "strict taxonomies" have several meanings: * IS-A * IS-IN (geographical) * IS-WITHIN (time) * IS-A-BRANCH-OF (or something. a species "is" not its parent genus)
And the less strict taxonomies are even more diverse (eg, characters are part of their fictional universe, a building may be part of the history of a town). And we haven't even gotten onto the difference between a subcat/parentcat relationship and an article/category relationship.
I don't think there are easy answers, but maybe there are solutions that cover many common cases.
Steve