On 8/24/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
How would you describe the relationship between Category:John Lennon and Category:The Beatles, knowing that Category:John Lennon contains songs that have nothing to do with The Beatles? Actually, just to flesh this out, what are the relationships between these (possibly fictional) categories: English rock bands, The Beatles, John Lennon, John Lennon songs, The Beatles songs. Similarly, into which categories would these articles go: [[The Beatles]], [[John Lennon]], [[I Am The Walrus]] (John Lennon/Beatles song), [[Imagine (song)]] (John Lennon solo song).
It's simple. Look up at my earlier subcategories of humans:
==Subcategories== All of the following are {{PAGENAME}}.
- People by city
- People by company
- People by country of residence
. . .
The key line is "All of the following are {{PAGENAME}}.". Well, let's rephrase that slightly: "All articles in each of the following categories are {{PAGENAME}}." Given the line "All articles in each of the following categories are British rock bands", does Category:The Beatles fit?
Part of the problem is that "British rock bands" implies a group of multiple people making music.
If that assumption is removed, then the John Lennon example works a little bit better.
E.g.: British rock musicians -> The Beatles -> John Lennon.
I.e. John Lennon "is a" Beatle The Beatles "are" British rock musicians John Lennon "is a" British rock musician (transitive example).
I had to make some plurals singular to make the above work as English sentences, but it avoids the "John Lennon 'is a' British rock band" problem.
Then the next problem is that John Lennon has two famous parts of his career - one as part of the Beatles, and one as a solo artist. Maybe you need to separate those two concepts?
How about this:
[[British rock musicians]]---------------- | \ [[John Lennon]]---------------- [[The Beatles]] | \ | [[John Lennon (solo career)]] [[John Lennon (Beatles career)]] | | [[Imagine (song)]] [[I Am The Walrus]]
Now, there are still problems with this: E.g. you can't say "Imagine (song) 'is a' John Lennon (solo career)", or "I Am The Walrus 'is a' John Lennon (Beatles career)", or "Imagine (song) 'is a' British rock musicians".
So the category / subcategory relationship is still a mess :-)
But what if when you specified a category, if you could say what the relationship was? (And the default could be "is a").
E.g.: * in [[John Lennon]], you could have [[Category:British rock musicians|relationship=is a]] * in [[Imagine (song)]], you could have [[Category:John Lennon (solo career)|relationship=composed by]] * in [[The Beatles]], you could have [[Category:John Lennon (Beatles career)|relationship=member of]] * in [[John Lennon]], you could have [[Category:John Lennon (solo career)|relationship=part of career]]
Then you could apply transitive stuff like "I Am The Walrus 'was composed by' John Lennon (Beatles career) 'who is a member of' The Beatles 'who are' British rock musicians"; and "I Am The Walrus 'was composed by' John Lennon (Beatles career) 'which a part of the career of' John Lennon 'who is a' British rock musician".
Also in such a system, having loops mightn't be incorrect or a problem at all, as long as the relationship between concepts is specified (and correct).
Also, you would be able to combine transitive concepts, as long as the relationship between then was the same. For example,
[[Labrador]] | is a | [[Dog]] | is a | [[Animal]]
Then you could logically transform the above into "Labrador is an Animal", and still be correct (since the relationship in both cases is the same, and therefore can be folded down into one step if desired).
Anyway, that's my thoughts on the topic. But I personally don't care that much about categorization, so feel free to ignore :-)
All the best, Nick.