[R] Wikibooks

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 3/30/2007 7:34 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
> Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> 
>> But the wiki doesn't offer a way to ask questions.  I'd be just as 
>> happy to answer questions there as here, but there are none there to 
>> answer 
>> (and the advice there is to ask questions here).
>> 
>> I don't know how to organize a wiki to make it easy to ask and 
>> answer questions.  It's a reasonably good way to collect reference 
>> information, but it's not very well suited to Q&A.
>> 
> The way to ask questions in the Wiki is to micro-vandalize it :-)))))))
> 
> Since anyone can edit, if I don't know how to use some function,
> I can _create_ this page and fill it with my doubts - in the hope
> that someone will then fix it latter.
> 
> Example:
> 
>   rnorm
> 
>   This is a very weird function, because things like rnorm(0.975) 
>   should return 1.96, but returns numeric(0)
> 
> And then someone would either rename the page to qnorm, or write
> a new rnorm page.

If entering a new page is really the way to ask a question, then you 
should write this on the front page, and as a possible way to contribute 
on the getting-started page.  It would also be a good idea to tell 
people like me how to find those questions. ("Recent Edits" seems a 
little too broad, with too little in the way of subject matter in the 
comments, but maybe that's just because nobody's asking questions yet.)

And it would be a good idea to seed the wiki with a lot of questions, 
just to get some activity going.

And maybe set up a page for pointers to questions that are languishing 
unanswered?  I think the key is to make it easy to ask a question and 
easy to answer one, so don't put too much bureaucracy into the process.


Duncan Murdoch