[Foundation-l] Plethora of overlapping Categories

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 11:44 AM, Rui Correia <correia.rui at gmail.com> wrote:

> I know I am in the wrong place for this. Normally this kind of thing would/
> should go on the "discuss" pages, but category discuss pages don't attract
> much attention.
>
> If you consult Categories: Sailors/ Navigators/ Explorers, you will see that
> quite a number of people are listed in these arguably (or not) overlapping
> categories for the same activity/ feat/ achievement.
>
> To put it into perspective, it makes sense to list a person in the
> categories of [[poet]], [[playwright]], etc, but in each of these categories
> such people would be different 'personae', with different works that make
> them merit being classified a poet or a playwright.
>
> On the other hand, to list - for example - Henry the Navigator/ Captain Cook
> as [[sailor]], [[navigator]], [[explorer]] looks odd as the activity
> undertaken to merit being given that title is only one. This is like calling
> a farmer a tiller/ sower/ weeder/ harvester/ etc.

Perhaps correct for sailor and navigator, but explorer is a different
thing. There's many sailors who are not explorers (because they only
sailed to places already known), and many explorers who are not
sailors (because they did their exploration by land (or in rare cases
by air)). Henry the Navigator belongs in none of these categories, by
the way, he neither sailed nor navigated nor explored himself, but
sent out and supported others who did these things.

-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com