[R-wiki] Factor pages

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "Gorjanc" == Gorjanc Gregor <Gregor.Gorjanc at bfro.uni-lj.si>
>>>>>     on Mon, 7 Aug 2006 08:41:19 +0200 writes:

    Gorjanc> Hi,
    >> No. Vincent Zoonekynd's Statistics with R is a separate guide by itself 
    >> (and I hope to have more documents like this, translated into the Wiki). 
    >> Apart from its translation into Wiki format (and perhaps, refreshment of 
    >> the content to work with latest R version), this is not to be 
    >> edited/merged with the rest.
    >> 
    >> The tips section starts with Paul Johnson's tips, but is dedicated to be 
    >> a collection of many more tips, contributed by the Wiki users.
    >> 
    >> Guides and Tips are very different sections. However, it is possible to 
    >> got some redundancy... a little bit like you have certainly redundancy 
    >> in the various contributed packages and documents on CRAN, but you 
    >> cannot force their authors for more coherence.

    Gorjanc> I agree that guides and tips are different, but it
    Gorjanc> would be great to go for one definite guide and
    Gorjanc> link tips to it? I just do not see the benefit of
    Gorjanc> having a multiple of a bit different
    Gorjanc> guides. Imagine several pages on the same topic in
    Gorjanc> wikipedia. The same applies with CRAN, but I think
    Gorjanc> that we should try to have one general
    Gorjanc> tool/guide/tip for one task/issue, ...  or am I
    Gorjanc> wrong?

I think you are partly right and partly wrong.
You are right the "reference" or "definition" information should
be in one place only if possible --- within a given "set", see
wikipedia.
In our context note that I think the "definition" / "reference"
is typically the help pages (from the latest version of R) ---
and fortunately Philippe has made the incorporation of these
into the Wiki a big priority for the Wiki
[[though there's still the bug that not all help page hyper
   links work as they should ]].


However there are many books covering the same topic, even many
encyclopedia.  Typically these books are for different
audiences; if they are very thorough books they all refer to the
original "definition".  
Hence, in our case, all "good" R-Wiki articles on 'factor'
should link to the R-Wiki-version of help(factor) .

In our case here, such guides are ``books for different
audiences''; and BTW even tips *can* (and should if I remember
Philippe's original intentions with the Wiki correctly) be aimed
at different audiences.
So there's definitely room for different guides explaining
'factor's in R -- and to reiterate the point -- if they should
be improved, they should point the wikified  help(factor) page.

Martin