[R-pkg-devel] CRAN Non-Triviality Requirement

[Joris Meys]

Hi Thomas,

I would argue that one dataset - even a new one - could be added to another
package. The pizzapoll doesn't look like a scientific breakthrough, but it
might be a nice dataset for teaching and/or testing new models. So I see
value in making it available on CRAN one way or another.

If you would consider adding your data to another package, there's a list
of fairly recent packages on this link:

https://rviews.rstudio.com/2017/11/01/r-data-packages/

But I have to be honest as well. CRAN now contains not one but two packages
with ... Chuck Norris quotes. Nothing else. Just Chuck Norris quotes. Both
published this year btw.

https://cran.r-project.org/package=norris
https://cran.r-project.org/package=roundhouse

There's also the "non-trivial" package cowsay that lets animals tell you
the error messages etc.

https://cran.r-project.org/package=cowsay

Or what do you think of the rfoaas package, that provides you F***k off as
a service?

https://cran.r-project.org/package=rfoaas

Plenty of other examples of totally bonker packages with absolutely no use
whatsoever even remotely related to something close to scientific. So that
CRAN policy looks pretty meaningless to me. I'd say: go ahead. If all that
garbage can be on CRAN, there's plenty of room there for a nice dataset
about a pizzapoll.

Cheers
Joris

PS: Yes, this is a frustration of mine, as I try to make my contributions
worthwhile and teach my students the same. And I hate it when said students
then come back at me with "but what about this package?". If a policy is
not enforced, then why bother installing it in the first place?

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 12:20 PM Thomas Levine <_ using thomaslevine.com> wrote:

> I want to publish a single dataset, and I am concerned about part of the
> CRAN policies. The preamble of the policies [1] says,
>
> > A package's contribution has to be non-trivial
>
> The single dataset [2, 3] is recent and not very widely known.
> Is it considered trivial?
>
> If so, what would be a good way to publish the dataset? For example,
> is there a package for contributed datasets, akin to datasets in base?
>
> [1] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html
> [2] https://thomaslevine.com/scm/pizzapoll
> [3] https://thomaslevine.com/scm/pizzapoll/uv/pizzapoll_2018.9.10.tar.gz
>
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> R-package-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>


-- 
Joris Meys
Statistical consultant

Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling
Ghent University
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