  The purpose of this article is to present ideas towards obtaining a model
category structure on the category of small strict n-categories, generalizing
the one obtained by Thomason on ordinary categories. Following ideas of
Grothendieck and Cisinski, we obtain an "abstract Thomason theorem", which
easily implies the classical Thomason theorem. We deduce a 2-categorical
Thomason theorem, an incorrect proof of which has been published by K.
Worytkiewicz, K. Hess, P. Parent and A. Tonks. For n > 2, we isolate sufficient
conditions to obtain an n-categorical Thomason theorem. These conditions will
be investigated in further work.
