Question about editor heirarchy

I notice that some cateories have an editor, yet there are still subcategories below those that have "Volunteer to Edit this category" there.

If a cat shows an "foobar" as an editor and people are successful in becoming editors for all the cats underneath "foobars", does "foobar" become reduncant(or have just the root sites) or does he/she have overall control over those cats beneath.

Sorry if this in not the most understandable text, I havent been up long.

Thanks

I am new here but I just finished 24 hours of non-stop reading of dmoz procedures <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

From what I have read, if you see that dmoz.org/one/two/three has an editor, and
dmoz.org/one/two/three/four does not have an editor, the editor(s) who edit the parent category 'three' can also edit child categories and children of child categories etc. The ownership is "inheritable".

If you were to apply and get accepted as an editor for dmoz.org/one/two/three/four, the guys closer to the root can still edit your category if they wanted to but they would probably speak to you first and not just dump stuff into "your" cat.

Editors don't really 'own' categories, they just get given the ability to work in them. When they are given the ability to edit a specific category, that also get the ability to edit all of the sub-categories too.

If a collection of editors sign up for the sub-categories under the one that 'foobar' works in, he doesn't lose the ability to work in those sub-categories, he can carry on working with the new editors. He also doesn't have 'overall control' over what the other editors do. Each editor with permissions for a given cat has the same level of 'control' as any other editor.