
On 23 Nov 2007, at 11:56 pm, hadley wickham wrote:


> My argument is that package reviews are a rather strange beast, being
> a review of something that is neither particularly stable

What do you mean here?  Surely all packages authors aim to provide  
reliable and effective software.  If they know that they are offering  
something unstable, they should say so clearly.  In fact, they should  
wait until it is stable.  Most R users are not researchers, but users.

>  Should the review be written
> for the package author (perhaps focussing on more technical/internal
> details) or for the package-using public (focussing on the overall
> philosophy and capabilities)?

Primarily for the public.

> The data available from
> http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/cranberries/ (although not currently
> arranged in the most useful form for that task) would useful to take
> into account.

This web reference shows that you are thinking of a quite different  
type of review.  What help would that be to a user?  (However helpful  
it could be to another researcher).

> The problem that started this thread was a problem finding the
> relevant R package and I'm not sure how package reviews would help.
> You would now have 1,000 lengthy reviews to read through instead of
> 1,000 brief paragraphs?

You're right, the thread has moved on.  No one would read either 1000  
reviews or 1000 brief paragraphs.  Reviewing should help to raise  
standards.  Good reviewers would point out connections with other  
packages and make comparisons.  (Which does take us partway back to  
the original thread.)

>  I have no arguments with the fact that a package review would be a
> great learning opportunity for the author, but I'm still not sure what
> it gains the wider community

A review would help the wider community more and that should be the  
aim.  Naturally authors would benefit as well.

> (apart from having better software).

Ah, that would be nice.

Antony Unwin
Professor of Computer-Oriented Statistics and Data Analysis,
Mathematics Institute,
University of Augsburg,
Germany




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