[R] creating an equivalent of r-help on r.stackexchange.com ? (was: Re: Should there be an R-beginners list?)

Liviu Andronic landronimirc at gmail.com
Tue Feb 4 08:24:14 CET 2014 

Dear Clint,


On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Clint Bowman <clint at ecy.wa.gov> wrote:
> Liviu,
>
> Thanks for the excellent description of the advantages of SE.  However,
> there is a significant fraction of the population that prefers that
> information be pushed out to them rather than having to pull it to them. The
> best system is one that accommodates both equally well.
>
It's not exactly the same as in a mail client, but you also have a
push-like interface on SE, sort of:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r
- The 'Newest' tab displays all recent questions, sorted in
chronological order with latest on top; it gets refreshed
automatically, as in a mail client (hence, "push-like")
- The 'Active' tab displays all questions with recent activity
(question asked, answered or commented upon)
- You also have the very useful 'Unanswered' tab, which allows to
identify questions that haven't yet received useful advice

Another push-like element in SE is that once you ask a question or
answer, any subsequent comments on your post will be notified to you
either in the web interface or by email. This helps keep discussions
alive.

Regards,
Liviu


>
> Clint
>
> Clint Bowman                    INTERNET:       clint at ecy.wa.gov
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>
> On Tue, 4 Feb 2014, Liviu Andronic wrote:
>
>> Dear Don and Bert,
>> Allow me to address some of your concerns below.
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:56 PM, Bert Gunter <gunter.berton at gene.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I find SO's voting for posting business especially irritating. I wish
>>> merely to post or to read the posts of others without being subjected
>>> to some kind of online pseudo game and ratings competition. That alone
>>> keeps me away. But Don said it better.
>>>
>> On SO voting is irrelevant for either posting a question or an answer.
>> *Anyone* (with an account) can ask a question, and *anyone* can answer
>> a question. Their system of privileges is explained here:
>> http://askubuntu.com/help/privileges . But to summarize:
>> - if you're interested only in giving help, then the only really
>> relevant threshold is 10 and 50 votes (removing some new user
>> restrictions and allowing you to comment on posts, respectively)
>> - if you're interested only in seeking  help, then all thresholds are
>> irrelevant really
>>
>> All other thresholds are relevant only if you're interested in
>> contributing to the organization of information, or in moderating this
>> whole forum-slash-wiki thingy. And as a note, given the quality of
>> your answers on r-help, Bert, I have no doubt that you will clock
>> upwards 50 upvotes in a couple of hours or so.
>>
>>
>>> I realize that I may be out of step with the masses here, and the
>>> masses should certainly decide. Hopefully I won't be around if/when
>>> they decide that R-help should go.
>>>
>> The proposal is not necessarily to close down r-help. From the myriad
>> lists it currently has, R Core could keep only r-help and r-devel, and
>> encourage new users to seek help on r.stackexchange.com. The scope of
>> r-help could be redefined.
>>
>>
>>> On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 12:42 PM, MacQueen, Don <macqueen1 at llnl.gov>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> - They waste copious amounts of screen space on irrelevant things such
>>>> as
>>>> "votes", the number of views, the elapsed time since something or other
>>>> happened, fancy web-page headers, and so on. Oh, and advertisements. The
>>>> Mathematica stackexchange example given in a link in one of the emails
>>>> below (http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/) illustrates these
>>>> shortcomings -- and it's not the worst such example.
>>>
>>>
>> Well, I've seen my fair share of advertisements on Gmail, Yahoo Mail
>> or what have you. I know some use dedicated clients, but not all do.
>> (And sofar I haven't noticed one single intrusive or distracting ad on
>> SE.)
>>
>> As for the number of votes, this is actually the most useful bit of
>> this Q&A interface: it allows for the best questions (or most often
>> asked) to stand out from all the noise. And it allows for the best
>> answers (or those most authoritative) to stand out, too. Accepted
>> answers immediately indicate to others seeking similar help what has
>> worked for the OP. Very useful stuff.
>>
>> Voting also naturally allows to differentiate between neophytes
>> (<100), and professional helpers (>1k; think of Brian, David or, as it
>> happens, Bert). If you remember long ago someone proposed on r-help a
>> reputation system for our professional helpers, only to be rebuffed
>> essentially because it is unfeasible in a ML interface. The SE Q&A web
>> interface---or similar---naturally handles this.
>>
>>
>>
>>>> - In most if not all cases, one has to login before posting. I have too
>>>> many usernames and passwords as it is.
>>>
>>>
>> Fair point. However SE found a neat way around this: it keeps cookies
>> around and whenever you close the browser and reopen SE, it identifies
>> the cookie and auto-logs you in.
>>
>>
>>>> Right now, at this very moment, in my email client's window I can see
>>>> and
>>>> browse the subject lines of 20 threads in r-help. And that's using only
>>>> about half of my screens vertical space. In contrast, in the Mathematica
>>>> stackexchange example, I can see at most 10, and that only by using the
>>>> entire vertical space of my screen. The "From" column in my email client
>>>> shows the names of several of the people contributing to the thread,
>>>> which
>>>> the browser interface does not. In the email client, I can move through
>>>> messages, and between messages in a thread using my keyboard. In a
>>>> browser, I have to do lots of mousing and clicking, which is much less
>>>> efficient.
>>>>
>> Again, fair point, but with SE you quickly realize that this is
>> irrelevant. On ML, even more so on r-help, the only sane way to sort
>> and filter the messages is using time. If a question wasn't answered
>> in 24h (or, to be generous, a week), chances tend to zero that this
>> question will ever be addressed. On SE it is absolutely normal for a
>> question to be answered, with a high-quality input, 3 months or 2
>> years later.
>>
>> It is also much easier to filter questions by topics: if you're
>> interested in GUI or plyr related questions, just display those tags,
>> and then answer relevant questions. On r-help you may only  guess from
>> the subject line what the question could possibly be about.
>>
>> The Q&A interface also allows easily to redirect users to similar
>> questions that were already answered (goodbye "PLEASE do read the
>> posting guide"), thus identifying duplicate questions. It also makes
>> it much easier to search for topics of interest that were already
>> addressed in the past; much easier than scouring the mountains of
>> untriaged r-help content.
>>
>> And do not underestimate the soft incentives induced by the voting
>> system. Users seek upvotes (you can set bounties, get moderator
>> privileges and so on), thus making them interested in giving
>> high-quality answers and asking high-quality questions. Very well
>> thought-out stuff.
>>
>>
>>>> As it is now, r-help messages come to me. I don't have to start up a
>>>> browser. So it's much easier to go take a quick look at what's new at
>>>> any
>>>> time.
>>>>
>> Agreed. I understand the frustration from using a different medium.
>>
>>
>>>> True, I had to subscribe to the mailing list, which involves a username
>>>> and password. But once it's done, it's done. I don't have to login
>>>> before
>>>> posting, which means I don't have to remember yet another username and
>>>> password.
>>>>
>> Mostly same happens with SE, the way they set it up.
>>
>>
>>>> What "...duplicated efforts of monitoring multiple mailing lists)"? I
>>>> have
>>>> no duplicated effort...in fact, I have almost no effort at all, since
>>>> the
>>>> messages come to me. There was some initial setup, i.e., to filter
>>>> different r-* messages to different mailboxes in my email client, but
>>>> now
>>>> that that's done, it's as simple as clicking on the correct mailbox.
>>>>
>> Do you follow r-sig-gui or r-sig-teaching or r-sig-finance or
>> r-sig-robust? Does Brian follow them all? Probably not. People who are
>> seeking specialized help have a hugely reduced chance of getting
>> useful help.
>>
>> On SE however, the efforts are not fragmented; all questions are asked
>> and answered in the same place. If a question pertains to 'plyr' and
>> 'finance', either a finance type or a plyr enthusiast are as likely to
>> answer. For the r-sig-* MLs, one would need to subscribe to all MLs
>> and monitor them all; few do so.
>>
>>
>>>> In other words, in every way that's important to me, the mailing list
>>>> approach is superior. I do not support abandoning the mailing list
>>>> system
>>>> for any alternative.
>>>
>>>
>> I'm not an SE  evangelist, and only truly discovered it about a month
>> ago or so (even though it seems that I had registered more than a year
>> ago), and initially I was quite very skeptical of this "fancy forum".
>> But when I actually realized how _efficient_ this Q&A interface is, I
>> quickly decided that r-help and associated r-sig-* were good to go the
>> way of the usenet. Long story short, the Q&A interface is impressive
>> in terms of economic efficiency, i.e. matching up supply and demand;
>> the ML is quite inefficient in comparison.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Liviu
>>
>>
>>>
>>>> -Don
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Don MacQueen
>>>>
>>>> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
>>>> 7000 East Ave., L-627
>>>> Livermore, CA 94550
>>>> 925-423-1062
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 2/2/14 1:49 PM, "Liviu Andronic" <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Dear Duncan,
>>>>> I discovered something interesting wrt to the licensing and mirroring
>>>>> of user-contributed material on StackExchange.  Please read below.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 9:00 PM, Duncan Murdoch
>>>>> <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm not aware of a discussion on this, but I would say no.
>>>>>>> Fragmentation is bad. Further fragmentation is worse.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> TL;DR
>>>>>>> =====
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Actually I'd say all mailing lists except r-devel should be moving to
>>>>>>> StackOverlow in the future (disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with it).
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I would generally agree with you, except for a few points.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1.  I avoid StackOverflow, because they claim copyright on the
>>>>>> compilation.
>>>>>> As I read their terms of service, it would be illegal for anyone to
>>>>>> download
>>>>>> and duplicate all postings about R.  So a posting there is only
>>>>>> available as
>>>>>> long as they choose to make it available. Postings to the mailing list
>>>>>> are
>>>>>> archived in several places.
>>>>>>
>>>>> It seems that StackOverflow is officially proposing user-generated
>>>>> content for download/mirroring:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2014/01/stack-exchange-cc-data-now-hosted-by
>>>>> -the-internet-archive/?cb=1
>>>>>
>>>>> "All community-contributed content on Stack Exchange is licensed under
>>>>> the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license. " And it is currently being
>>>>> mirrored at least at the Internet Archive:
>>>>> https://archive.org/details/stackexchange
>>>>>
>>>>> So, in principle, it would be possible/desirable to:
>>>>> - spin the 'r' tag from StackOverflow and propose an
>>>>> r.stackexchange.com
>>>>> at
>>>>> http://area51.stackexchange.com/categories/8/technology . Such a SE
>>>>> site would be similar to http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/
>>>>> - involve R Core to give blessing for using the R logo, if necessary.
>>>>> This would be similar to what Ubuntu does with AskUbuntu:
>>>>> http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/5444/is-ask-ubuntu-official-ubuntu
>>>>> - set a mirror on r-project.org for all the user content that is
>>>>> produced by r.stackexchange.com , and thus allow R Core to keep the
>>>>> info publicly available at all times. The mirroring on Internet
>>>>> Archive would still hold.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> 2.  I think an interface like StackOverflow is better than the mailing
>>>>>> list
>>>>>> interface, and will eventually win out.  R-help needs to do nothing,
>>>>>> once
>>>>>> someone puts together something like StackOverflow that attracts most
>>>>>> of the
>>>>>> people who give good answers, R-help will just fade away.
>>>>>>
>>>>> The advantages for such a move are countless (especially wrt to
>>>>> efficiently organizing R-related knowledge and directing users to
>>>>> appropriate sources of info), so I won't go into that. I would only
>>>>> note that most 'r-sig-*' MLs would become obsolete in such a setup,
>>>>> and would be replaced by the much more efficient tagging system of the
>>>>> SE Q&A web interface (for example, all posts appropriate for r-sig-gui
>>>>> would simply be tagged with 'gui'; no need for duplicated efforts of
>>>>> monitoring multiple mailing lists).
>>>>>
>>>>> Opinions?
>>>>>
>>>>> Liviu
>>>>>
>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>>>
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Do you know how to read?
>> http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
>> http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
>> Do you know how to write?
>> http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>>
>



-- 
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