[R-wiki] Gelman's comments about R tips vs Wiki
Philippe Grosjean
phgrosjean at sciviews.org
Mon Apr 24 11:16:19 CEST 2006
Could we come back to this discussion once I will have changed the start
page (with folded details) and when I will have a decent proposition for
sidebars in place of this ugly and buggy 'Index', please?
Best,
Philippe
Martin Maechler wrote:
>>>>>>"Gabor" == Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at gmail.com>
>>>>>> on Sun, 23 Apr 2006 09:43:07 -0400 writes:
>
>
> Gabor> I think the most important thing is that if you click
> Gabor> on tips in the left hand pane that you get to the
> Gabor> table of contents discussed here rather than the
> Gabor> uninformative one. It should not be necessary to
> Gabor> read the page at all whether it uses folding or not.
>
> I agree with Gabor:
> Philippe, maybe you and I (to some extent) belong to the small
> and diminishing (up to extinction) part of the population who do
> read and even like to read and do this even with web pages (and
> R help pages!)
> The vast (and growing) majority of the population are *scanning*
> web pages until they've found something that seems somewhat
> relevant and is "clickable"...
>
> And, I have to admit that indeed, the scanning strategy is
> often more effective than the reading one..
> Martin
>
> Gabor> On 4/23/06, Philippe Grosjean
> Gabor> <phgrosjean at sciviews.org> wrote:
> >> Gabor Grothendieck wrote: > Its too much to expect that
> >> people are going to read everything that is > there.
> >> They just want to get to where they are going as fast as
> >> possible > and to read the entire page and then figure
> >> out you have to click on the > word shorter is subtle,
> >> complicated and time consuming.
> >>
> >> Not my fault! The start page I proposed was one screen
> >> height, with only five links (one for each main section
> >> in the Wiki), and less that 50 words in total. So, quick
> >> to read, easy to spot where to go, etc. But them, many
> >> people told me that this starting page was rather
> >> uninformative and that one needed more about what is
> >> inside each section... so, this is done! And yes, this
> >> necessarily dilutes content.
> >>
> >> As a betgter compromize, I intend to rework that start
> >> page using folded sections that you can unfold by
> >> clicking on them. So, the first presentation will be
> >> similar to my original page, with the possibility to get
> >> more details right on this starting page.
> >>
> >> PhG
> >>
> >> > To make it > doubly confusing if you do click on tips
> >> to the left you get to something > so there is no reason
> >> to suspect that there is a better alternative.
> >> >
> >> > On 4/23/06, Philippe Grosjean <phgrosjean at sciviews.org>
> >> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >>Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>>Yes, possibly with some elaboration in certain cases.
> >> By the way, >>>that is not the page you get if you click
> >> on tips after going to >>>wiki.r-project.org and clicking
> >> on tips to the left.
> >> >>
> >> >>How many times do I need to tell that the left pane
> >> displays, by >>default, the complete index of all wiki
> >> pages, but this will be replaced >>by more useful
> >> 'sidebars'. We haven't done these sidebars yet. So, this
> >> >>part of the site must still be considered as work in
> >> progress.
> >> >>
> >> >>Now, here is what happens when you navigate through
> >> pages: >>1) You enter in http://wiki.r-project.org,
> >> right?
> >> >>
> >> >>2) You read this page (considering you are visiting the
> >> site the first >>time... otherwise, you would have
> >> bookmarked 'tips:tips', I suppose) and >>see:
> >> >>
> >> >>...
> >> >>
> >> >>Tips & Tricks
> >> >>
> >> >>A large compendium of _shorter pages_ describing
> >> details of how >>particular commands can be used and
> >> giving examples of useful code. >>...
> >> >>
> >> >>with "shorter pages" being a link pointing to that
> >> 'tips:tips' page. So, >>what simpler can I do?
> >> >>
> >> >>PhG
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>>On 4/23/06, Philippe Grosjean
> >> <phgrosjean at sciviews.org> wrote:
> >> >>>
> >> >>>
> >> >>>>Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>>In thinking about this some more perhaps one
> >> possibliity would be to have >>>>>an index which
> >> incluldes the answer. That would allow one to browse the
> >> >>>>>key code and also see an expanded wiki discussion.
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>>e.g.
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>>1.1 Bring raw numbers into R: scan(myfile) >>>>>1.2
> >> Basic notation on data access: iris[1,2] >>>>>1.3
> >> Exchange data between R and Excel/other progs:
> >> read.xls(excelfile) >>>>>[also robdc, foreign and Hmisc
> >> packages] >>>>>1.4 Merge data frames: merge(ds1, ds1, by
> >> = c("city", "x1"),all=TRUE)
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>Hum, hum... you mean, something like:
> >> >>>>http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php?id=tips:tips
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>:-)
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>PhG
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>>On 4/23/06, Gabor Grothendieck
> >> <ggrothendieck at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>>>Each tip should be one (or a small number of lines)
> >> for the description >>>>>>and one line (or a small number
> >> of lines) for the answer -- not pages. >>>>>>Look at
> >> Paul Johnson's original organization and its quite clear
> >> its >>>>>>superior for both browsing and searching.
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>On 4/23/06, Gavin Simpson <gavin.simpson at ucl.ac.uk>
> >> wrote:
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>On Sun, 2006-04-23 at 05:57 -0400, Gabor
> >> Grothendieck wrote:
> >> >>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>>On 4/23/06, Philippe Grosjean
> >> <phgrosjean at sciviews.org> wrote:
> >> >>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>>>Tony Plate wrote:
> >> >>>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>>>>[...] (see hereunder for full post)
> >> >>>>>>>>>>However, maybe this can be partially addressed
> >> by having larger index >>>>>>>>>>pages, each one pointing
> >> to many different small example pages. [...]
> >> >>>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>>>Exactly! Speaking about "browsing" the tips, the
> >> key is not to have all >>>>>>>>>tips on one page, but an
> >> i
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>ndex, table of content, summary, or
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>>>whatever-you-call-it page. You browse that page
> >> and click on the links >>>>>>>>>you want. This is more
> >> effective than browsing tens of thousands of
> >> >>>>>>>>>lines to discover that the tips you are looking
> >> for is the forelast one, >>>>>>>>>that is, the 9,999th
> >> one!
> >> >>>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>>You want to browse the code itself, not just an
> >> index. The way >>>>>>>>you learn R is to look at a lot
> >> of code and not by having to waste >>>>>>>>time jumping
> >> to dozens or hundreds of different pages.
> >> >>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>Gabor
> >> >>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>/you/ might learn R best that way, but I doubt
> >> many people will. From my >>>>>>>own experience and from
> >> teaching R to colleagues and with students on
> >> >>>>>>>short courses is that they like a reasonable
> >> grounding in the basics to >>>>>>>allow them to get
> >> started, and then when they started doing their own
> >> >>>>>>>thing they want to ask "how do I do x?" Scanning a
> >> list of tips allows >>>>>>>them to drill down to the few
> >> items that sound like they might answer >>>>>>>their
> >> question. People don't want to read page after page of
> >> code - >>>>>>>especially on a screen - just to find the
> >> one sentence or line of code >>>>>>>that will help them
> >> solve their immediate problem.
> >> >>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>G
>
>
>
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