I think the main source of confusion/disagreement has been this:

- You want status objects to belong to a class hierarchy (like single
inheritance in OOP).

- I believe a single-inheritance class hierarchy would 1) add complexity
we don't need; 2) risk painting us into a corner if we get statuses that
have a "multiple personality" and we have to arbitrarily decide that one
of the personalities dominates over the others.

It also seems to me that your main opposition to my approach is that you
think it's 1) confusing to the user receiving status objects; 2)
unreliable to the user receiving status objects.

Is this reasonable close?