[WikiEN-l] Category destruction

[William Pietri]

Andrew Gray wrote:
> And here we come to the fundamental problem. It's all very well to say
> we need to redevelop the category system, to say that the system is
> broken and failing and so on, but in order to do this we need to
> *decide what categories are*.
>
> We have yet to manage this. Everyone brings their own conceptions to
> the table; we regularly get complaints about the stupidity and
> wastefulness of the system, which are fundamentally just "my preferred
> concept of what this system is is not being used".
>
> We need to sort this out before we go any further - and the problem is
> that both sides are entirely convinced that theirs is the self-evident
> only way to work.

That's well said.

Another way to tackle this might to ask a different question. "What are 
categories," seems better suited for a philosophy seminar. We might get 
more useful answers if we ask, "What can people use categories to do?"

With a list like that, we can figure out which uses we'd like to 
support, and from there I'd expect the argument over which system to use 
would be much easier.

William