An R community member named Ajay wrote today about the "R programming"
wiki-book project (link to Ajay's
post<http://decisionstats.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/the-r-online-wikibook/>),
and I would like to know what you think about the project:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/R_Programming

Ajay believes that

> "What we need is a consolidated document that can add 1) show multiple
> packages on the same topic (eg clustering) 2) be used as a handy reference
> book 3) be editable and updated for package specific updates."



Personally I am a bit skeptical.
It seems that there are already many good (freely contributed) books about R
on:
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/
What will this book has to offer over the others?
Who will have use for a community based book about R? (beginners? advanced
useRs? R gurus ?!)
Who will be willing to contribute to such a book? (will the authors of the
above books be willing to set their content CC, to go into the public book)
Who can (and might want) to coordinate the development of such a book?
Who might work at editing such a book? (I know many of the active R
community users are already putting much time into coding, and answering
questions here and on SO, so will they have the time?)

I can imagine University instructors encouraging students to work on the
book as homework assignments. I can imagine R book authors
contributing material, and R community leaders taking on working on such a
project.
But I am truly wondering if there is a real need or interest in such a
project by members of the R community.


Tal Galili







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