[R-wiki] Factor pages

[Philippe Grosjean]

Gorjanc Gregor wrote:
> OK, I agree here.
> 
> But, should we, beside pointing to help(factor), cross-reference all
> guides and tips on the same topic?
> 
> Gregor

Sure! And also, you are free to contact Vincent Zoonekynd and propose to 
rework respective pages to make them more complementary, if you like.
Best,

Philippe Grosjean

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Maechler [mailto:maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch]
> Sent: Mon 2006-08-07 10:08
> To: Gorjanc Gregor
> Cc: Philippe Grosjean; Ben Bolker; r-sig-wiki at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R-wiki] Factor pages
>  
> 
>>>>>>"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
> 
> 
> 
> 
>