Also, frankly, I haven't seen much of a sign that the community itself has some kind of deep understanding of some/many that I lack.  People have been giving me different answers to my question, many of which are not consistent with each other, and some of which seem not to be consistent with themselves.  Regarding what to do about Alternative, I have been getting a whole range of answers, including:  do nothing but add more documentation, split some/many off from Alternative into a separate subclass, remove instances from Alternative got Maybe and [], etc.  So it's not as if there is this obvious and complete picture of what Alternative is or should be about that is available to nearly everyone here but me, an part of the reasons why I have been pushing so hard here is to see if we can work towards a consensus of some kind on this issue.