[R] Wikibooks

[Bert Gunter]

Question:

Many (perhaps most?) questions on the list are easily answerable simply by
checking existing R Docs (Help file/man pages, Intro to R, etc.). Why would
a Wiki be more effective in deflecting such questions from the mailing list
than them? Why would too helpful R experts be more inclined to refer people
to the Wiki than the existing docs? Bottom line: it's psychology at issue
here, I think, not the form of the docs. 

Disclaimer 1: None of this is meant to reflect one way or ther other on the
usefulness of Wikis as a documentation format -- only their ability to
change the Help list culture.

Disclaimer 2: Others have repeatedly made similar comments (asking us to
refer people to the docs rather than providing explicit answers, I mean).

Cheers,
Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Statistics
South San Francisco, CA 94404
650-467-7374


-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Frank E Harrell Jr
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 3:32 PM
To: Ben Bolker
Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] Wikibooks

Ben Bolker wrote:
> Alberto Monteiro <albmont <at> centroin.com.br> writes:
> 
>> As a big fan of Wikipedia, it's frustrating to see how little there is
about 
>> R in the correlated project, the Wikibooks:
>>
>> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/R_Programming
>>
>> Alberto Monteiro
>>
> 
>   Well, we do have an R wiki -- http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php
--
> although it is not as active as I'd like.  (We got stuck halfway through
> porting Paul Johnson's "R Tips" to it ...)   Please contribute!
>   Most of the (considerable) effort people expend in answering
> questions about R goes to the mailing lists -- I personally would like it
if some
> tiny fraction of that energy could be redirected toward the wiki, where
> information can be presented in a nicer format and (ideally) polished
> over time -- rather than having to dig back through multiple threads on
the
> mailing lists to get answers.  (After that we have to get people
> to look for the answers on the wiki.)

I would like to strongly second Ben.  In some ways, R experts are too 
nice.  Continuing to answer the same questions over and over does not 
lead to a better way using R wiki.  I would rather see the work go into 
enhancing the wiki and refactoring information, and responses to many 
r-help please for help be "see wiki topic x".  While doing this let's 
consider putting a little more burden on new users to look for good 
answers already provided.

Frank

> 
>   Just my two cents -- and I've been delinquent in my 
> wiki'ing recently too ...
> 
>   Ben Bolker
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 


-- 
Frank E Harrell Jr   Professor and Chair           School of Medicine
                      Department of Biostatistics   Vanderbilt University

______________________________________________
R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.