Most of the examples you gave were for methods that weren't for public consumption. They had leading underscores that customarily mean they're "private".

Overloading is a great feature that allows you to add to what an operator does. Ideally the operators will continue to do similar things. It is possible to misues overloading to create confusing new behavior, but your example of '>' was not one of them. The '>' operator is 'greater than'; it is also used in open to indicate that you're creating a file for write; and it's used to redirect program output. In the context you showed, the use of '>' is still consistent with these ideas.