I feel that as long as people continue to provide help on r-help wikis
will not be successful. I think we need to move to a central wiki or
discussion board and to move away from e-mail. People are extremely
helpful but e-mail seems to be to always be memory-less and messages get
too long without factorization of old text. R-help is now too active
and too many new users are asking questions asked dozens of times for
e-mail to be effective.
The wiki also needs to collect and organize example code, especially for
data manipulation. I think that new users would profit immensely from a
compendium of examples.
Just my .02 Euros
Frank
--
Frank E Harrell Jr Professor and Chair School of Medicine
Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University
Frank makes an intersting point. For those interested, A site I spend quite a bit of time on for Linux related stuff is IMHO really well done. There are fora for many different linux distrubtions. There is a wiki, a collection of tutorials, etc. If you want to take a look, the url is http://www.linuxquestions.org/ Kevin Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:> I feel that as long as people continue to provide help on r-help wikis > will not be successful. I think we need to move to a central wiki or > discussion board and to move away from e-mail. People are extremely > helpful but e-mail seems to be to always be memory-less and messages get > too long without factorization of old text. R-help is now too active > and too many new users are asking questions asked dozens of times for > e-mail to be effective. > > The wiki also needs to collect and organize example code, especially for > data manipulation. I think that new users would profit immensely from a > compendium of examples. > > Just my .02 Euros > > Frank-- Kevin E. Thorpe Biostatistician/Trialist, Knowledge Translation Program Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto email: kevin.thorpe at utoronto.ca Tel: 416.946.8081 Fax: 416.946.3297
On 1/6/06, John Marsland <john.marsland at mac.com> wrote:> I see your point. Maybe the answer is to use the list for R-help style > questions, but encourage people who answer questions to point the the > answers in the wiki - which they might have enhanced if necessary. > > On 1/6/06, Fernando Henrique Ferraz P. da Rosa <academic at feferraz.net> wrote: > > John Marsland writes: > > > Trac would have the advantage of pushing questions on the R list back towards > > > the actual source code and allowing all users to participate in the future > > > development of the software. > > > > > > > I see that this could be useful for R-devel, but considering the > > volume of traffic and the kind of contents on R-help, I don't think such > > tying to the actual source code would be so useful. Perhaps trac could > > be used as an integrated interface for r-devel/svn and the bug track > > system, and another wiki solution be used exclusiverly for the r-help > > community (which includes many people not directly interested in coding > > or development issues). > > > > -- > > "Though this be randomness, yet there is structure in't." > > Rosa, F.H.F.P > > > > Instituto de Matem??tica e Estat??stica > > Universidade de S??o Paulo > > Fernando Henrique Ferraz P. da Rosa > > http://www.feferraz.net > > > > >
I second Frank's comment! I wonder if questioners who receive a bunch of useful replies could be encouraged to enter a summary of those on a Wiki, in much the same way as users of S-news were expected to post a summary of their answers as a way of giving something back. An existing R Wiki is located at http://fawn.unibw-hamburg.de/cgi-bin/Rwiki.pl?RwikiHome However, there's currently not much on it. Recently on R-help there was a summary of using databases with R, which looked very useful, so I put that on the Wiki. Maybe if others just start putting things there it can gather momentum? -- Tony Plate Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:> I feel that as long as people continue to provide help on r-help wikis > will not be successful. I think we need to move to a central wiki or > discussion board and to move away from e-mail. People are extremely > helpful but e-mail seems to be to always be memory-less and messages get > too long without factorization of old text. R-help is now too active > and too many new users are asking questions asked dozens of times for > e-mail to be effective. > > The wiki also needs to collect and organize example code, especially for > data manipulation. I think that new users would profit immensely from a > compendium of examples. > > Just my .02 Euros > > Frank
I don't have any significant experience with wikis, but I have yet to use any discussion board that was anywhere near as useful to me, or as easy to use, as an email list. Discussion boards have a web browser interface. Typically, they display at most a dozen topics at a time. Scrolling to get the next dozen is slow, as it requires a download from some web server. There is a huge amount of wasted screen space. When there is a topic that generates many messages scrolling through them is slow, as some discussion board interfaces show only 6 or 7 at a time. Search engines provided by the discussion board software are limited and slow. In contrast, in my email client I can show about three dozen subject lines at a time, I can quickly scroll up and down through the list, I can quickly group all the messages with the same subject line with a single click of the mouse. I can easily and quickly store selected messages of particular interest to a place where I can easily find them again. My email software searches very quickly through a huge number of messages. Then there's the question of administration and maintenance. Who is going to set up the wiki or discussion board categories? As far as I can tell (and that's actually not very far), either of them would require a lot more time and effort to set up and maintain than the present email list. Yes, r-help has a huge volume -- right now, my R-help mailbox has almost 22,000 messages in it, 2004-01-02 to the present; its size is about 124 mb. Yes, there is a lot of duplication. None the less, I find it easier and quicker to scan the subject lines a few times a day for interesting-looking topics than it would be to go to a browser and have to navigate up and down through various categories, looking for interesting-looking topics. As far as I can tell, the wiki concept is more along the lines of a reference library, whereas mailing lists and discussion boards are meant for people to ask each other questions, and give each other answers. If that perception is at all accurate, I would have to say that a wiki is by no means a suitable replacement for an email list. And when it comes to a choice between an email list and a discussion board, I have a strong preference for the email list. -Don At 7:04 PM -0600 1/5/06, Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:>I feel that as long as people continue to provide help on r-help wikis >will not be successful. I think we need to move to a central wiki or >discussion board and to move away from e-mail. People are extremely >helpful but e-mail seems to be to always be memory-less and messages get >too long without factorization of old text. R-help is now too active >and too many new users are asking questions asked dozens of times for >e-mail to be effective. > >The wiki also needs to collect and organize example code, especially for >data manipulation. I think that new users would profit immensely from a >compendium of examples. > >Just my .02 Euros > >Frank >-- >Frank E Harrell Jr Professor and Chair School of Medicine > Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University > >______________________________________________ >R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list >https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html-- -------------------------------------- Don MacQueen Environmental Protection Department Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Livermore, CA, USA
I use free Gmail to receive R-help emails. It is nice since 1. You can search your email quickly. 2. Replies to the same emails would be grouped together chronologically. 3. You can set up filters to put emails to different labels according to the key words. Please check the detailed description at http://mail.google.com/mail/help/why_gmail.html On 1/6/06, Don MacQueen <macq at llnl.gov> wrote:> I don't have any significant experience with wikis, but I have yet to > use any discussion board that was anywhere near as useful to me, or > as easy to use, as an email list. > > Discussion boards have a web browser interface. Typically, they > display at most a dozen topics at a time. Scrolling to get the next > dozen is slow, as it requires a download from some web server. There > is a huge amount of wasted screen space. When there is a topic that > generates many messages scrolling through them is slow, as some > discussion board interfaces show only 6 or 7 at a time. Search > engines provided by the discussion board software are limited and > slow. > > In contrast, in my email client I can show about three dozen subject > lines at a time, I can quickly scroll up and down through the list, I > can quickly group all the messages with the same subject line with a > single click of the mouse. I can easily and quickly store selected > messages of particular interest to a place where I can easily find > them again. My email software searches very quickly through a huge > number of messages. > > Then there's the question of administration and maintenance. Who is > going to set up the wiki or discussion board categories? As far as I > can tell (and that's actually not very far), either of them would > require a lot more time and effort to set up and maintain than the > present email list. > > Yes, r-help has a huge volume -- right now, my R-help mailbox has > almost 22,000 messages in it, 2004-01-02 to the present; its size is > about 124 mb. Yes, there is a lot of duplication. None the less, I > find it easier and quicker to scan the subject lines a few times a > day for interesting-looking topics than it would be to go to a > browser and have to navigate up and down through various categories, > looking for interesting-looking topics. > > As far as I can tell, the wiki concept is more along the lines of a > reference library, whereas mailing lists and discussion boards are > meant for people to ask each other questions, and give each other > answers. If that perception is at all accurate, I would have to say > that a wiki is by no means a suitable replacement for an email list. > And when it comes to a choice between an email list and a discussion > board, I have a strong preference for the email list. > > -Don > > At 7:04 PM -0600 1/5/06, Frank E Harrell Jr wrote: > >I feel that as long as people continue to provide help on r-help wikis > >will not be successful. I think we need to move to a central wiki or > >discussion board and to move away from e-mail. People are extremely > >helpful but e-mail seems to be to always be memory-less and messages get > >too long without factorization of old text. R-help is now too active > >and too many new users are asking questions asked dozens of times for > >e-mail to be effective. > > > >The wiki also needs to collect and organize example code, especially for > >data manipulation. I think that new users would profit immensely from a > >compendium of examples. > > > >Just my .02 Euros > > > >Frank > >-- > >Frank E Harrell Jr Professor and Chair School of Medicine > > Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University > > > >______________________________________________ > >R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > >https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > >PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > > > -- > -------------------------------------- > Don MacQueen > Environmental Protection Department > Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory > Livermore, CA, USA > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >-- Xiaohua Dai, Dr.
I am a fan of wiki's and I reckon it would really help with making R more accessible. On one extreme you have this email list and on the other extreme you have RNews and the PDF's on CRAN. A wiki might hit the spot between them and reduce the traffic on the email list. Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:> I feel that as long as people continue to provide help on r-help wikis > will not be successful. I think we need to move to a central wiki or > discussion board and to move away from e-mail. People are extremely > helpful but e-mail seems to be to always be memory-less and messages get > too long without factorization of old text. R-help is now too active > and too many new users are asking questions asked dozens of times for > e-mail to be effective. > > The wiki also needs to collect and organize example code, especially for > data manipulation. I think that new users would profit immensely from a > compendium of examples. > > Just my .02 Euros > > Frank
Several people have stated that one of the problems with the current Email help model is that many questions are asked over, and over again and that people do not search for past answers. Let me point out that the existence of past answers and how to find and search is not known by many people, particularly novice R users. The situation would be greatly helped if the mailing list would automatically add a header or footer to all Email messages giving the URL of the archived Email threads. Don't expect people to know that what are not told! Those people who, in their answers, suggest that people should search the archives should include the URL of the archives in their response (http://carn.us.r-project.org then click on the word SEARCH in the left-hand column ). Even if a novice would think about searching the R archives he, or she, might have difficulty finding the correct site. A naive google search of "R-archive" and "R archive" did not return the correct URL. Even if a novice would know about the CRAN web site (CRAN is not an intuitive acronym for R), when the novice would get to the CRAN web site they would have to know to click on SEARCH. It might help if the CRAN web site contained a link titled SEARCH R ARCHIVES. John John Sorkin M.D., Ph.D. Chief, Biostatistics and Informatics Baltimore VA Medical Center GRECC and University of Maryland School of Medicine Claude Pepper OAIC University of Maryland School of Medicine Division of Gerontology Baltimore VA Medical Center 10 North Greene Street GRECC (BT/18/GR) Baltimore, MD 21201-1524 410-605-7119 - NOTE NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: jsorkin at grecc.umaryland.edu>>> Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> 01/07/06 10:15 AM >>>On 1/6/2006 8:02 PM, paul sorenson wrote:> I am a fan of wiki's and I reckon it would really help with making R > more accessible. On one extreme you have this email list and on the > other extreme you have RNews and the PDF's on CRAN. A wiki might hit > the spot between them and reduce the traffic on the email list.The difficulty is getting it going. I haven't used Wikis, and visited the two that have been mentioned, aiming to answer the example question Frank posed ("ylim in barplots"). It's not addressed on either, which is not too surprising, but then I didn't know what to do next, either as someone who wanted the answer, or someone who wanted to provide it. Duncan Murdoch> > Frank E Harrell Jr wrote: > >>I feel that as long as people continue to provide help on r-help wikis >>will not be successful. I think we need to move to a central wiki or >>discussion board and to move away from e-mail. People are extremely >>helpful but e-mail seems to be to always be memory-less and messages get >>too long without factorization of old text. R-help is now too active >>and too many new users are asking questions asked dozens of times for >>e-mail to be effective. >> >>The wiki also needs to collect and organize example code, especially for >>data manipulation. I think that new users would profit immensely from a >>compendium of examples. >> >>Just my .02 Euros >> >>Frank > > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html______________________________________________ R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
Jon, Thank you for the terse form of the URL. I hope the mailing list will automatically include it in there Email messages. John John Sorkin M.D., Ph.D. Chief, Biostatistics and Informatics Baltimore VA Medical Center GRECC and University of Maryland School of Medicine Claude Pepper OAIC University of Maryland School of Medicine Division of Gerontology Baltimore VA Medical Center 10 North Greene Street GRECC (BT/18/GR) Baltimore, MD 21201-1524 410-605-7119 - NOTE NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: jsorkin at grecc.umaryland.edu>>> Jonathan Baron <baron at psych.upenn.edu> 01/07/06 11:00 AM >>>On 01/07/06 10:51, John Sorkin wrote:> The situation > would be greatly helped if the mailing list would automatically add a header or > footer to all Email messages giving the URL of the archived Email threads. Don't > expect people to know that what are not told! Those people who, in their answers, > suggest that people should search the archives should include the URL of the archives > in their response (http://carn.us.r-project.org then click on the word SEARCH in the > left-hand column ).Or, more tersely, http://cran.r-project.org/search.html. http://cran.us.r-project.org/search.html is a mirror, and there are other mirrors. Jon -- Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron ______________________________________________ R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
Martin Maechler
2006-Jan-07 16:24 UTC
[R] Finding R mailing list archives {was "Wikis etc."}
>>>>> "John" == John Sorkin <jsorkin at grecc.umaryland.edu> >>>>> on Sat, 07 Jan 2006 11:05:01 -0500 writes:John> Jon, Thank you for the terse form of the URL. I hope John> the mailing list will automatically include it in John> there Email messages. John well, it *already* contains> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.htmlwhere the first URL is **the** R-help page, and has itself links to more than one archive of the mailing list, and the 2nd URL (posting guide) also explains many things (including the mailing list page and archives). I really wonder if adding yet another URL to the footer of every message will be the solution; as others have correctly remarked, the problem is that for many newbies it is more convenient to ask rather than to first read something that contains more than three words. ;-) Well, then, maybe for some people, an extra line with another link ("click click" instead of reading) might be the solution... Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich, (your mailing list maintainer)
Uwe, I think you suggestion for giving the URL of the archives as, "cran-MIRROR/search.html" (emphasis added) is not optimal, because the URL as does not work. The URL given should work as given. Thus, http://cran.us.r-project.org/search.html http://www.stats.bris.ac.uk/R/search.html or http://cran.r-project.org/search.htm are more helpful. John John Sorkin M.D., Ph.D. Chief, Biostatistics and Informatics Baltimore VA Medical Center GRECC and University of Maryland School of Medicine Claude Pepper OAIC University of Maryland School of Medicine Division of Gerontology Baltimore VA Medical Center 10 North Greene Street GRECC (BT/18/GR) Baltimore, MD 21201-1524 410-605-7119 - NOTE NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: jsorkin at grecc.umaryland.edu>>> Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de> 01/07/06 11:14 AM >>>Jonathan Baron wrote:> On 01/07/06 10:51, John Sorkin wrote: > >>The situation >>would be greatly helped if the mailing list would automatically add a header or >>footer to all Email messages giving the URL of the archived Email threads. Don't >>expect people to know that what are not told! Those people who, in their answers, >>suggest that people should search the archives should include the URL of the archives >>in their response (http://carn.us.r-project.org then click on the word SEARCH in the >>left-hand column ). > > > Or, more tersely, http://cran.r-project.org/search.html.But then, everybody loads stuff from CRAN master and does not use an appropriate mirror. I'd like to suggest *not* to use any mirror URL explicitly in R-help mails (always, not only related to this thread). In this case, I'd propose to write something like "CRAN-mirror/search.html" Uwe> http://cran.us.r-project.org/search.html is a mirror, and there > are other mirrors. > > Jon
Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:> paul sorenson wrote: > >> I am a fan of wiki's and I reckon it would really help with making R >> more accessible. On one extreme you have this email list and on the >> other extreme you have RNews and the PDF's on CRAN. A wiki might hit >> the spot between them and reduce the traffic on the email list. > > > Thanks Paul. But as long as the email list is active I fear a wiki > won't be.That would be sad if that were true. They are different beasts, as would be an IRC channel. I say complementary, not mutually exclusive. A wiki takes time to reach critical mass (eg my home brew wiki http://brewiki.org/ or wikipedia) and you couldn't just pull the plug on this list without a serious impact on the uptake of R I would have thought. Contributions to the wiki from mugs like me with less R/statistics experience would hopefully make R more accessible to newbies - pointing out the traps for new players. One way to bootstrap it is to simply add a "wiki" menu entry into the r-project.org menu. This is what the guys over at http://wiki.wxpython.org/ have done. Over time, some of the other items there might morph in to wiki pages as appropriate. I have no doubt that if the R-Wiki was supported in the same thoughtful, thorough and patient way in which questions on R-Help are answered, it would be one of the lowest entropy wiki's around. I have some experience with moinmoin (a python wiki) and would be willing to contribute some time and skills if that would help.
Hello all, Sorry for not taking part of this discussion earlier, and for not answering Detlef Steuer, Martin Maechler, and others that asked more direct questions to me. I am away from my office and my computer until the 16th of January. Just quick and partial answers: 1) I did not know about Hamburg RWiki. But I would be happy to merge both in one or the other way, as Detlef suggests it. 2) I choose DokuWiki as the best engine after a careful comparison of various Wiki engines. It is the best one, as far as I know, for the purpose of writting software documentation and similar pages. There is an extensive and clearly presented comparison of many Wikki engines at: http://www.wikimatrix.org/. 3) I started to change DokuWiki (addition of various plugins, addition of R code syntax coloring with GESHI, etc...). So, it goes well beyond all current Wiki engines regarding its suitability to present R stuff. 4) The reasons I did this is because I think the Wiki format could be of a wider use. I plan to change a little bit the DokuWiki syntax, so that it works with plain .R code files (Wiki part is simply embedded in commented lines, and the rest is recognized and formatted as R code by the Wiki engine). That way, the same Wiki document can either rendered by the Wiki engine for a nice presentation, or sourced in R indifferently. 5) My last idea is to add a Rpad engine to the Wiki, so that one could play with R code presented in the Wiki pages and see the effects of changes directly in the Wiki. 6) Regarding the content of the Wiki, it should be nice to propose to the authors of various existing document to put them in a Wiki form. Something like "Statistics with R" (http://zoonek2.free.fr/UNIX/48_R/all.html) is written in a way that stimulates additions to pages in perpetual construction, if it was presented in a Wiki form. It is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license, that is, exactly the same one as DokuWiki that I choose for R Wiki. Of course, I plan to ask its author to do so before putting its hundreds of very interesting pages on the Wiki... I think it is vital to have already something in the Wiki, in order to attract enough readers, and then enough contributors! 7) Regarding spamming and vandalism, DokuWiki allows to manage rights and users, even individually for pages. I think it would be fine to lock pages that reach a certain maturity (read-only / editable by selected users only) , with link to a discussion page which remaining freely accessible at the bottom of locked pages. 8) I would be happy to contribute this work to the R foundation in one way or the other to integrate it in http://www.r-project.org or http://cran.r-project.org. But if it is fine keeping it in http://www.sciviews.org as well, it is also fine for me. I suggest that all interested people drop a little email to my mailbox. I'll recontact you when I will be back to my office to work on a more elaborate solution altogether when I am back at my office. Best, Philippe Grosjean
Philippe's idea to start a wiki that grows out of the content on http://zoonek2.free.fr/UNIX/48_R/all.html is really great. Here's why. My hypothesis is that the basic reason that people ask questions on R-help rather than first looking elsewhere is that looking elsewhere doesn't get them the info they need. People think in terms of the tasks they have to do. The documentation for R, which can be very good, is organized in terms of the structure of R, its functions. This mismatch -- people think of tasks, the documentation "thinks in" functions -- causes people to turn to the mailing list. What we need is documentation that can be browsed in terms of tasks, like http://zoonek2.free.fr/UNIX/48_R/all.html. If that can be edited by the community, all the better. This is especially good for newbies (like myself) who try a tutorial, find that it lacks in some aspect, and can give immediate feedback, e.g., via a Wiki. As far as keeping current with the latest versions of R, I think we'll have to arrive at some sort of convention that says: the code in this example works with R version X, package version Y. Then, if that code is found to fail in some future version, it's easy enough to make a second exampe. (As a bonus, these examples could be an automated test suite for R.) Philippe, if you find you'd like assistance, I'd like to help.
> I really wonder if adding yet another URL to the footer of every > message will be the solution; as others have correctly remarked, > the problem is that for many newbies it is more convenient to ask > rather than to first read something that contains more than three > words. ;-)hahaha. the balance between (i) harsh to the newbie and (ii) boring to the experts. balance is hard. :)
To avoid spam on the R wikis pages: If we assume that anyone who we would want to be empowered to modify the R wiki pages is an R-user, would it be possible to somehow incorporate a function into the next R release which provides a user with a key/password? A new R function would generate a day-of-the year dependent key: if you want to modify an R wiki page you need to enter the key for that day (This is not a proposal to make keys user specific: every R user worldwide would have the same key each day). Then only a person who has installed R would be able to run the function to get a key to modify R wiki pages. Of course anyone could read the wikis. I supposed that if we wanted, that the key provided could somehow encode the O/S and R version being run, and then the wiki page modified would note which O/S and version the annotator is running, however for ease of use I suggest that the key generated each day be short for simplicy in typing it in. I suppose a more complex solution would be for an R function to make a call to open a web-browser with a cookie or something set which thus allows the user to modify R wiki pages. Leif Kirschenbaum Senior Yield Engineer Reflectivity, Inc. (408) 737-8100 x307 leif at reflectivity.com