[R] New R website: R-Cookbook.com

Fri Sep 28 17:21:22 CEST 2007

Hi Philippe,

I don't want to be competing in any way with any of the fantastic  
official R resources that exist; I only want to supplement them.    
Although this list is probably not the best place to discuss the  
proper use of wiki's for documentation/learning, I'll make a few  
comments on the role, I believe, R-Cookbook.com can play.

First of all, R-Cookbook.com offers two organization schemes,  
dictated by the users: linear and (what's being call) non-linear.   
Recipes can be placed in guides in order to organize content linearly  
in a way more familiar to most users.  Recipes can also be free- 
tagged, not only by the author, but by the community (much like a  
wiki--although you've actually implemented a linear scheme for tips  
and lack the non-linear aspect).

Secondly, some people like to retain authorship of these sorts of  
things, and not only for selfish reasons, like self promotion.   
First, they get to control how their message is delivered--other's  
can't edit it.  My guess is that you have the wiki configured as most  
wiki's are--community editing rights.  To counter the issues  
associated with individual-control in a community-oriented site, at R- 
Cookbook.com, other users can comment on the recipe, or express their  
regards for the quality of the recipe via the rating system.  Or they  
can create a recipe on the same topic, and the "similar recipe"  
engine should display it beneath the recipe in question.  Some people  
also like to retain authorship merely so their friends/students/fans  
can keep track of their work.  At R-Cookbook.com, users get a url  
specific to their recipes (in the format http://www.r-cookbook.com/ 
recipes/[username]) along with a feed of all of their recipes.  Also,  
this multi-level feed system is not available (I don't believe) via  
dokuwiki's framework.  If a person were only interested in  
visualization, they could use their favorite RSS news reader, and  
only keep track of recipes related to visualization.  Or if a person  
had a great deal of respect for a few authors, they could track their  
contributions the same way.

In principle, a wiki may not be the best place to store "recipes"  
either.  Because most wiki's like to have one article per topic, the  
community is forced to establish a "best" article via community  
editing.  At R-Cookbook.com, there can be more than one recipe for a  
certain problem/issue, letting the community decide the preferred  
solution via ratings/comments.  Sure, having more than one article  
can be done with a wiki's, but it almost defeats the purpose--I'm a  
purist, sorry.  ;)

More generally, recipes on R-Cookbook.com are free to go a different  
direction as what has been currently established as tips on the wiki  
(I know this can change, but I'm just saying...).  "Recipes" can be  
very problem specific, related to many topics, or very specific to  
the authors data, or whatever the case may be--not necessarily  
related to one method of analysis or one function.  Where would  
something like that go in your current linear organization of tips?   
At R-Cookbook.com, I would still appreciate and value the  
contribution because someone might find it useful, and they could  
discover it via tags, the search engine, a user feed, or the similar  
recommendation engine.  Personally, I just don't see a place for that  
sort of entry in the wiki.

With all of that said, if there is anything at R-cookbook.com that  
you believe would benefit the wiki more than perhaps a link to the  
recipe, the content is freely available to the public, and it is in  
your rights to put it there.

Again, the site is purely to support the community, and I really  
don't believe it is in competition with what your wiki offers.  I'd  
be glad to continue this discussion off-list and appreciate you  
bringing up the point though, it's a good question, that I hope I've  
answered.

Jeff.

On Sep 28, 2007, at 4:11 AM, Philippe Grosjean wrote:

> Hello Jeff,
>
> Good initiative,... but why not to put this in the official R Wiki
> (http://wiki.r-project.org)? There is a section named 'tips' dedicated
> to such little recipes
> (http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php?id=tips:tips). It should be
> better to centralize all these little tips, don't you think so?
>
> Should you have difficulties to use the Wiki, just tell me, and I will
> help...
> Best,
>
> Philippe Grosjean
>
> ..............................................<°}))><........
>   ) ) ) ) )
> ( ( ( ( (    Prof. Philippe Grosjean
>   ) ) ) ) )
> ( ( ( ( (    Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems
>   ) ) ) ) )   Mons-Hainaut University, Belgium
> ( ( ( ( (
> ..............................................................
>
> Jeff wrote:
>> R Community,
>>
>> I've put together a website that I thought this mailing list might be
>> interested in: http://www.r-cookbook.com
>>
>> It's a (free) community-driven content management system for R
>> "recipes", or working examples.  Some of the features of the site are
>> code highlighting, recipe ratings, recipe comments, personal "recipe
>> boxes" to save your favorite recipes, community tagging, RSS feeds
>> for each user and for each tag, and similar recipe recommendations.
>>
>> Although I imagine that many users will sort/search/find recipes by
>> tags, I've implemented a linear organization for recipes as well:
>> guides.  These will be compilations of "recipes", organized in a
>> logical fashion as to promote understanding of the topic of that
>> particular guide and introduced with user-contributed pages.  Over
>> time, hopefully with the help of the community, more guides will be
>> created and the ones I have will be filled-in to actually be useful.
>> I have started several guides to give you an idea of the sort of
>> thing I'm thinking: Introduction to R, Longitudinal Modeling in R,
>> Exploratory Data Analysis in R, and more here, http://www.r-
>> cookbook.com/guide
>>
>> A couple of features that will be worked on in the near future are
>> (1) the design of the site and (2) working on a more interactive code
>> display (right now, functions are highlighted and linked to the r-
>> docs, but that's it).
>>
>> I hope some of you might find the site useful and perhaps even
>> consider contributing your own recipes.  If you have any suggestions
>> or feature requests, I'd be glad to hear them!
>>
>> Jeff.
>>
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>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting- 
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>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>
> ______________________________________________
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting- 
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