[R] Fwd: opinion - sharing problem data and other stuff.

[John McKown]

Thanks for your thoughts, Sarah and Jeff! I do appreciate the time and
effort. I will refrain from posting a link to a GIST as the main part of my
response. But I still like the idea, but I'm going to modify it a bit. For
any replies that I make which are not 3 or 4 lines, I'm going to create a
new GIST. This is be mainly for myself. But more often, if I see a
technique that I really like (and I have seen some good stuff), I am going
to create a GIST from that so that I have a good, "cloud" based place which
contains it. That way, I'm less likely to totally forget how somebody else
fixed a problem. Being a public archive, anybody here will be able to grab
anything they want from if, should there be anything of any use to others.
Being a bit anal about it, I will try very hard to keep the proper
attribution of the poster's name (as logged here on the list). I don't want
to claim credit (or blame, for that matter <grin>) for something that is
not my work.


On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 5:14 PM, Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us>
wrote:

> Hear, hear. Getting the questioner to slow down and look at what they
> really want is key, because if they don't know what they want then their
> question will be unclear, and I hate answering a question that was never
> really what the OP was looking for in the first place.
>
> One problem I have encountered is questions where key information is in a
> linked web page that goes away, rendering the posting archive useless. I
> suppose as long as gists don't "age out" they can be okay for some
> questions, but I am still way less likely to go digging there to answer
> questions in the first place.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.
>
> On August 13, 2014 2:50:16 PM PDT, Sarah Goslee <sarah.goslee at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >Hi John,
> >
> >People do sometimes link to external data and code, though I'm not
> >sure I've seen any in that particular format.
> >
> >But, two things to consider.
> >
> >A. I'm lazy. If the problem is fully-formed in the email, I'm more
> >likely to try to solve it than if I have to go download something and
> >figure out what's in it. (Even leaving aside the potential issues with
> >downloading random things.)
> >
> >B. A *small* reproducible example is usually a good thing. There are
> >not that many cases where the whole big dataset is necessary. Further,
> >the exercise of creating a small reproducible example is often enough
> >to solve the problem, without ever needed to bother R-help at all.
> >
> >Granted, I'm also likely to skip posts to the list with enormous
> >dput() data dumps too. I'm a big fan of the "small" part.
> >
> >Sarah
> >
> >On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 5:41 PM, John McKown
> ><john.archie.mckown at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> This is just a thought that has occurred to me. I don't know if it is
> >> an "Oh, WOW!" or an "Are you KIDDING?!?" type thought. So I thought
> >> I'd ask here.
> >>
> >> I use github for a few things. Nothing great, but maybe nice. Anyway,
> >> one feature of GitHub is the GIST feature. What I am used to github
> >> being for is a project consisting of many complete files. A gist can
> >> contain many files, but is really for a set of snippets. Such as code
> >> sequences. Or maybe the output from a dput().
> >>
> >> If I have a "big" problem where I think that having all the data and
> >> my attempted solutions available, I think it would be far kinder of
> >me
> >> to put a _good_ synopsis of the problem here on the list. And a
> >> clickable URL to the gist I have created for the problem. That would
> >> decrease the bandwidth on the email server. And save space on it.
> >And,
> >> lets face it, in many cases only a few people are going to really
> >look
> >> at any given problem "in depth", so why have a huge email go out to
> >> the entire community?
> >>
> >> My idea may not be useful, I really am not sure. But my motive is
> >> trying to keep everybody's inbox from overflowing. And make it easier
> >> to supply really good data, but only to those who are interested.
> >>
> >> Thanks for any feedback.
> >>
> >>
>
>


-- 
There is nothing more pleasant than traveling and meeting new people!
Genghis Khan

Maranatha! <><
John McKown



-- 
There is nothing more pleasant than traveling and meeting new people!
Genghis Khan

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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