[R] R - Wikis and R-core

[phgrosjean@sciviews.org]

Hello Martin and others,

I am happy with this decision. I'll look a little bit at this next week.

Best,

Philippe Grosjean

> We've had a small "review time" within R-core on this topic,
> amd would like to state the following:
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> The R-core team welcomes proposals to develop an R-wiki.
>
> - We would consider linking a very small number of Wikis (ideally one)
>   from www.r-project.org and offering an address in the r-project.org
> domain (such as 'wiki.r-project.org').
>
> - The core team has no support time to offer, and would be looking for
>   a medium-term commitment from a maintainer team for the Wiki(s).
>
> - Suggestions for the R documentation would best be filtered through the
>
>   Wiki maintainers, who could e.g. supply suggested patches during the
> alpha  phase of an R release.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Our main concerns have been about ensuring the quality of such extra
> documentation projects, hence the 2nd point above.
> Several of our more general, not mainly R, experiences have been
> of outdated web pages which are continued to be used as
> reference when their advice has long been superseded.
> I think it's very important to try ensuring that this won't
> happen with an R Wiki.
>
> Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich
>
>>>>>> "PhGr" == Philippe Grosjean <phgrosjean at sciviews.org>
>>>>>>     on Sun, 8 Jan 2006 17:00:44 +0100 (CET) writes:
>
>     PhGr> Hello all, Sorry for not taking part of this
>     PhGr> discussion earlier, and for not answering Detlef
>     PhGr> Steuer, Martin Maechler, and others that asked more
>     PhGr> direct questions to me. I am away from my office and
>     PhGr> my computer until the 16th of January.
>
>     PhGr> Just quick and partial answers: 1) I did not know
>     PhGr> about Hamburg RWiki. But I would be happy to merge
>     PhGr> both in one or the other way, as Detlef suggests it.
>
>     PhGr> 2) I choose DokuWiki as the best engine after a
>     PhGr> careful comparison of various Wiki engines. It is the
>     PhGr> best one, as far as I know, for the purpose of
>     PhGr> writting software documentation and similar
>     PhGr> pages. There is an extensive and clearly presented
>     PhGr> comparison of many Wikki engines at:
>     PhGr> http://www.wikimatrix.org/.
>
>     PhGr> 3) I started to change DokuWiki (addition of various
>     PhGr> plugins, addition of R code syntax coloring with
>     PhGr> GESHI, etc...). So, it goes well beyond all current
>     PhGr> Wiki engines regarding its suitability to present R
>     PhGr> stuff.
>
>     PhGr> 4) The reasons I did this is because I think the Wiki
>     PhGr> format could be of a wider use. I plan to change a
>     PhGr> little bit the DokuWiki syntax, so that it works with
>     PhGr> plain .R code files (Wiki part is simply embedded in
>     PhGr> commented lines, and the rest is recognized and
>     PhGr> formatted as R code by the Wiki engine). That way, the
>     PhGr> same Wiki document can either rendered by the Wiki
>     PhGr> engine for a nice presentation, or sourced in R
>     PhGr> indifferently.
>
>     PhGr> 5) My last idea is to add a Rpad engine to the Wiki,
>     PhGr> so that one could play with R code presented in the
>     PhGr> Wiki pages and see the effects of changes directly in
>     PhGr> the Wiki.
>
>     PhGr> 6) Regarding the content of the Wiki, it should be
>     PhGr> nice to propose to the authors of various existing
>     PhGr> document to put them in a Wiki form. Something like
>     PhGr> "Statistics with R"
>     PhGr> (http://zoonek2.free.fr/UNIX/48_R/all.html) is written
>     PhGr> in a way that stimulates additions to pages in
>     PhGr> perpetual construction, if it was presented in a Wiki
>     PhGr> form. It is licensed as Creative Commons
>     PhGr> Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license, that
>     PhGr> is, exactly the same one as DokuWiki that I choose for
>     PhGr> R Wiki. Of course, I plan to ask its author to do so
>     PhGr> before putting its hundreds of very interesting pages
>     PhGr> on the Wiki... I think it is vital to have already
>     PhGr> something in the Wiki, in order to attract enough
>     PhGr> readers, and then enough contributors!
>
>     PhGr> 7) Regarding spamming and vandalism, DokuWiki allows
>     PhGr> to manage rights and users, even individually for
>     PhGr> pages. I think it would be fine to lock pages that
>     PhGr> reach a certain maturity (read-only / editable by
>     PhGr> selected users only) , with link to a discussion page
>     PhGr> which remaining freely accessible at the bottom of
>     PhGr> locked pages.
>
>     PhGr> 8) I would be happy to contribute this work to the R
>     PhGr> foundation in one way or the other to integrate it in
>     PhGr> http://www.r-project.org or
>     PhGr> http://cran.r-project.org. But if it is fine keeping
>     PhGr> it in http://www.sciviews.org as well, it is also fine
>     PhGr> for me.
>
>     PhGr> I suggest that all interested people drop a little
>     PhGr> email to my mailbox.  I'll recontact you when I will
>     PhGr> be back to my office to work on a more elaborate
>     PhGr> solution altogether when I am back at my office.
>     PhGr> Best,
>
>     PhGr> Philippe Grosjean
>
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