[R] Wikibooks

[Philippe Grosjean]

Bert Gunter wrote:
> Question:
> 
> Many (perhaps most?) questions on the list are easily answerable simply by
> checking existing R Docs (Help file/man pages, Intro to R, etc.). Why would
> a Wiki be more effective in deflecting such questions from the mailing list
> than them? Why would too helpful R experts be more inclined to refer people
> to the Wiki than the existing docs? Bottom line: it's psychology at issue
> here, I think, not the form of the docs. 

Answer:

The online help, vignettes and manuals have a very intimidating (i.e., 
technical) presentation for people that tend to be afraid of such a 
crude presentation. It is apparently not your case, and this is probably 
why you even don't realize this could be a problem for a non negligible 
fraction of R. The Wiki was primarily targeted to them. As you say: it's 
psychology at issue here.

As other have pointed out, the main reason for the lack of success of 
the R Wiki is that the mailing lists, particularly R-Help, are sooo 
successful. However, I continue to consider that the mailing list is 
suboptimal in two cases: (1) when text is not enough to express the 
idea, and (2) for frequent questions that would certainly deserve a good 
compilation on a wiki page and a redirection to it everytime the 
question is asked.

Best,

Philippe Grosjean
-- 
..............................................<°}))><........
  ) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( (    Prof. Philippe Grosjean
  ) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( (    Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems
  ) ) ) ) )   Mons-Hainaut University, Belgium
( ( ( ( (
..............................................................



> Disclaimer 1: None of this is meant to reflect one way or ther other on the
> usefulness of Wikis as a documentation format -- only their ability to
> change the Help list culture.
> 
> Disclaimer 2: Others have repeatedly made similar comments (asking us to
> refer people to the docs rather than providing explicit answers, I mean).
> 
> Cheers,
> Bert Gunter
> Genentech Nonclinical Statistics
> South San Francisco, CA 94404
> 650-467-7374
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Frank E Harrell Jr
> Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 3:32 PM
> To: Ben Bolker
> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] Wikibooks
> 
> Ben Bolker wrote:
>> Alberto Monteiro <albmont <at> centroin.com.br> writes:
>>
>>> As a big fan of Wikipedia, it's frustrating to see how little there is
> about 
>>> R in the correlated project, the Wikibooks:
>>>
>>> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/R_Programming
>>>
>>> Alberto Monteiro
>>>
>>   Well, we do have an R wiki -- http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php
> --
>> although it is not as active as I'd like.  (We got stuck halfway through
>> porting Paul Johnson's "R Tips" to it ...)   Please contribute!
>>   Most of the (considerable) effort people expend in answering
>> questions about R goes to the mailing lists -- I personally would like it
> if some
>> tiny fraction of that energy could be redirected toward the wiki, where
>> information can be presented in a nicer format and (ideally) polished
>> over time -- rather than having to dig back through multiple threads on
> the
>> mailing lists to get answers.  (After that we have to get people
>> to look for the answers on the wiki.)
> 
> I would like to strongly second Ben.  In some ways, R experts are too 
> nice.  Continuing to answer the same questions over and over does not 
> lead to a better way using R wiki.  I would rather see the work go into 
> enhancing the wiki and refactoring information, and responses to many 
> r-help please for help be "see wiki topic x".  While doing this let's 
> consider putting a little more burden on new users to look for good 
> answers already provided.
> 
> Frank
> 
>>   Just my two cents -- and I've been delinquent in my 
>> wiki'ing recently too ...
>>
>>   Ben Bolker
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> 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
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
> 
>