User:Ingoolemo/Threads/06/08/01a

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[edit] Rotary rocket

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You deleted a load of categorisations of the article contents. So far as I can tell that's not a good idea; the categories need to be reasonably complete and comprehensive to be useful, and arbitrarily removing things from a category basically amounts to vandalising the category. If you want to do that kind of thing, you have to delete the entire category, or make sure that the article is already transitively in that category and by definition will remain so before removing it.WolfKeeper 05:14, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

• Category:Proposed spacecraft is the master category for Category:Single stage to orbit, and is therefore redundant and unnecessary.

No, because if and when a single stage to orbit is built, single stage to orbit will be removed from proposed spacecraft. But the Roton is still likely to be in proposed spacecraft. Right?WolfKeeper 23:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

• Category:Private spaceflight is the master category for Category:Commercial spaceflight,

which is the master category for Category:Space access, which is the master category for Category:Single stage to orbit. The inclusion of the latter therefore makes all three redundant and unnecessary.

You seem to be assuming that categories are hierarchical, but they aren't in general. They're more like Venn diagrams.WolfKeeper 23:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Thus, by placing the article in Category:Experimental rockets, Category:Reusable launch vehicles, Category:Rotorcraft, Category:Single stage to orbit, and Category:Spaceplanes, we can ensure that the Roton is transitively in every single category that it was before I did my trimming, while significantly reducing the category clutter that existed before. The redundant categories should only be retained if the minimalist categorisation I propose here does not fully describe the Roton.

There is a reason why we only place the B-29 in Category:U.S. bomber aircraft 1940-1949, and not also in Category:Aircraft, Category:Aviation, Category:Military equipment, and Category:1940s: because the minimalist category already describes every single one of the more general categories. Ingoolemo ^talk 19:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but that's clearly hierarchical, but these space categories aren't nearly so neat. For example if a billionaire owned a suborbital runabout for his own personal use, is that commercial spaceflight? No. So perhaps private spaceflight shouldn't be a subcategory of commercial spaceflight. In fact it's clear to me that they are not subsets of each other at all, although they are related.WolfKeeper 23:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the bottom line here is you are really deleting stuff to make it look pretty, rather than being strictly accurate. I think accuracy is generally more important, YMMV.WolfKeeper 23:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)