[R] creating an equivalent of r-help on r.stackexchange.com ? (was: Re: Should there be an R-beginners list?)
Clint Bowman
clint at ecy.wa.gov
Tue Feb 4 22:26:33 CET 2014
Jason,
Thanks--I've found an RSS feed from EPA very useful and will check
Stackoverflow's.
Clint
Clint Bowman INTERNET: clint at ecy.wa.gov
Air Quality Modeler INTERNET: clint at math.utah.edu
Department of Ecology VOICE: (360) 407-6815
PO Box 47600 FAX: (360) 407-7534
Olympia, WA 98504-7600
USPS: PO Box 47600, Olympia, WA 98504-7600
Parcels: 300 Desmond Drive, Lacey, WA 98503-1274
On Tue, 4 Feb 2014, Law, Jason wrote:
> Clint and Liviu,
>
> Stackoverflow also has rss feeds available, if you prefer being pushed the information that way. For the R tagged questions it's here: http://stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/r. Since some e-mail clients double as feed readers, you may be able to read the feed from your e-mail client. Otherwise, it does mean another application.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jason
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Liviu Andronic
> Sent: Monday, February 03, 2014 11:24 PM
> To: Clint Bowman
> Cc: r-help at r-project.org; Bert Gunter
> Subject: Re: [R] creating an equivalent of r-help on r.stackexchange.com ? (was: Re: Should there be an R-beginners list?)
>
> Dear Clint,
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Clint Bowman <clint at ecy.wa.gov> wrote:
>> Liviu,
>>
>> Thanks for the excellent description of the advantages of SE.
>> However, there is a significant fraction of the population that
>> prefers that information be pushed out to them rather than having to
>> pull it to them. The best system is one that accommodates both equally well.
>>
> It's not exactly the same as in a mail client, but you also have a push-like interface on SE, sort of:
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r
> - The 'Newest' tab displays all recent questions, sorted in chronological order with latest on top; it gets refreshed automatically, as in a mail client (hence, "push-like")
> - The 'Active' tab displays all questions with recent activity (question asked, answered or commented upon)
> - You also have the very useful 'Unanswered' tab, which allows to identify questions that haven't yet received useful advice
>
> Another push-like element in SE is that once you ask a question or answer, any subsequent comments on your post will be notified to you either in the web interface or by email. This helps keep discussions alive.
>
> Regards,
> Liviu
>
>
>>
>> Clint
>>
>> Clint Bowman INTERNET: clint at ecy.wa.gov
>> Air Quality Modeler INTERNET: clint at math.utah.edu
>> Department of Ecology VOICE: (360) 407-6815
>> PO Box 47600 FAX: (360) 407-7534
>> Olympia, WA 98504-7600
>>
>> USPS: PO Box 47600, Olympia, WA 98504-7600
>> Parcels: 300 Desmond Drive, Lacey, WA 98503-1274
>>
>> On Tue, 4 Feb 2014, Liviu Andronic wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Don and Bert,
>>> Allow me to address some of your concerns below.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:56 PM, Bert Gunter <gunter.berton at gene.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I find SO's voting for posting business especially irritating. I
>>>> wish merely to post or to read the posts of others without being
>>>> subjected to some kind of online pseudo game and ratings
>>>> competition. That alone keeps me away. But Don said it better.
>>>>
>>> On SO voting is irrelevant for either posting a question or an answer.
>>> *Anyone* (with an account) can ask a question, and *anyone* can
>>> answer a question. Their system of privileges is explained here:
>>> http://askubuntu.com/help/privileges . But to summarize:
>>> - if you're interested only in giving help, then the only really
>>> relevant threshold is 10 and 50 votes (removing some new user
>>> restrictions and allowing you to comment on posts, respectively)
>>> - if you're interested only in seeking help, then all thresholds are
>>> irrelevant really
>>>
>>> All other thresholds are relevant only if you're interested in
>>> contributing to the organization of information, or in moderating
>>> this whole forum-slash-wiki thingy. And as a note, given the quality
>>> of your answers on r-help, Bert, I have no doubt that you will clock
>>> upwards 50 upvotes in a couple of hours or so.
>>>
>>>
>>>> I realize that I may be out of step with the masses here, and the
>>>> masses should certainly decide. Hopefully I won't be around if/when
>>>> they decide that R-help should go.
>>>>
>>> The proposal is not necessarily to close down r-help. From the myriad
>>> lists it currently has, R Core could keep only r-help and r-devel,
>>> and encourage new users to seek help on r.stackexchange.com. The
>>> scope of r-help could be redefined.
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 12:42 PM, MacQueen, Don <macqueen1 at llnl.gov>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> - They waste copious amounts of screen space on irrelevant things
>>>>> such as "votes", the number of views, the elapsed time since
>>>>> something or other happened, fancy web-page headers, and so on. Oh,
>>>>> and advertisements. The Mathematica stackexchange example given in
>>>>> a link in one of the emails below
>>>>> (http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/) illustrates these
>>>>> shortcomings -- and it's not the worst such example.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Well, I've seen my fair share of advertisements on Gmail, Yahoo Mail
>>> or what have you. I know some use dedicated clients, but not all do.
>>> (And sofar I haven't noticed one single intrusive or distracting ad
>>> on
>>> SE.)
>>>
>>> As for the number of votes, this is actually the most useful bit of
>>> this Q&A interface: it allows for the best questions (or most often
>>> asked) to stand out from all the noise. And it allows for the best
>>> answers (or those most authoritative) to stand out, too. Accepted
>>> answers immediately indicate to others seeking similar help what has
>>> worked for the OP. Very useful stuff.
>>>
>>> Voting also naturally allows to differentiate between neophytes
>>> (<100), and professional helpers (>1k; think of Brian, David or, as
>>> it happens, Bert). If you remember long ago someone proposed on
>>> r-help a reputation system for our professional helpers, only to be
>>> rebuffed essentially because it is unfeasible in a ML interface. The
>>> SE Q&A web interface---or similar---naturally handles this.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>> - In most if not all cases, one has to login before posting. I have
>>>>> too many usernames and passwords as it is.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Fair point. However SE found a neat way around this: it keeps cookies
>>> around and whenever you close the browser and reopen SE, it
>>> identifies the cookie and auto-logs you in.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> Right now, at this very moment, in my email client's window I can
>>>>> see and browse the subject lines of 20 threads in r-help. And
>>>>> that's using only about half of my screens vertical space. In
>>>>> contrast, in the Mathematica stackexchange example, I can see at
>>>>> most 10, and that only by using the entire vertical space of my
>>>>> screen. The "From" column in my email client shows the names of
>>>>> several of the people contributing to the thread, which the browser
>>>>> interface does not. In the email client, I can move through
>>>>> messages, and between messages in a thread using my keyboard. In a
>>>>> browser, I have to do lots of mousing and clicking, which is much
>>>>> less efficient.
>>>>>
>>> Again, fair point, but with SE you quickly realize that this is
>>> irrelevant. On ML, even more so on r-help, the only sane way to sort
>>> and filter the messages is using time. If a question wasn't answered
>>> in 24h (or, to be generous, a week), chances tend to zero that this
>>> question will ever be addressed. On SE it is absolutely normal for a
>>> question to be answered, with a high-quality input, 3 months or 2
>>> years later.
>>>
>>> It is also much easier to filter questions by topics: if you're
>>> interested in GUI or plyr related questions, just display those tags,
>>> and then answer relevant questions. On r-help you may only guess
>>> from the subject line what the question could possibly be about.
>>>
>>> The Q&A interface also allows easily to redirect users to similar
>>> questions that were already answered (goodbye "PLEASE do read the
>>> posting guide"), thus identifying duplicate questions. It also makes
>>> it much easier to search for topics of interest that were already
>>> addressed in the past; much easier than scouring the mountains of
>>> untriaged r-help content.
>>>
>>> And do not underestimate the soft incentives induced by the voting
>>> system. Users seek upvotes (you can set bounties, get moderator
>>> privileges and so on), thus making them interested in giving
>>> high-quality answers and asking high-quality questions. Very well
>>> thought-out stuff.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> As it is now, r-help messages come to me. I don't have to start up
>>>>> a browser. So it's much easier to go take a quick look at what's
>>>>> new at any time.
>>>>>
>>> Agreed. I understand the frustration from using a different medium.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> True, I had to subscribe to the mailing list, which involves a
>>>>> username and password. But once it's done, it's done. I don't have
>>>>> to login before posting, which means I don't have to remember yet
>>>>> another username and password.
>>>>>
>>> Mostly same happens with SE, the way they set it up.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> What "...duplicated efforts of monitoring multiple mailing lists)"?
>>>>> I have no duplicated effort...in fact, I have almost no effort at
>>>>> all, since the messages come to me. There was some initial setup,
>>>>> i.e., to filter different r-* messages to different mailboxes in my
>>>>> email client, but now that that's done, it's as simple as clicking
>>>>> on the correct mailbox.
>>>>>
>>> Do you follow r-sig-gui or r-sig-teaching or r-sig-finance or
>>> r-sig-robust? Does Brian follow them all? Probably not. People who
>>> are seeking specialized help have a hugely reduced chance of getting
>>> useful help.
>>>
>>> On SE however, the efforts are not fragmented; all questions are
>>> asked and answered in the same place. If a question pertains to
>>> 'plyr' and 'finance', either a finance type or a plyr enthusiast are
>>> as likely to answer. For the r-sig-* MLs, one would need to subscribe
>>> to all MLs and monitor them all; few do so.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> In other words, in every way that's important to me, the mailing
>>>>> list approach is superior. I do not support abandoning the mailing
>>>>> list system for any alternative.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I'm not an SE evangelist, and only truly discovered it about a month
>>> ago or so (even though it seems that I had registered more than a
>>> year ago), and initially I was quite very skeptical of this "fancy forum".
>>> But when I actually realized how _efficient_ this Q&A interface is, I
>>> quickly decided that r-help and associated r-sig-* were good to go
>>> the way of the usenet. Long story short, the Q&A interface is
>>> impressive in terms of economic efficiency, i.e. matching up supply
>>> and demand; the ML is quite inefficient in comparison.
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>> Liviu
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>> -Don
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Don MacQueen
>>>>>
>>>>> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 7000 East Ave., L-627
>>>>> Livermore, CA 94550
>>>>> 925-423-1062
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2/2/14 1:49 PM, "Liviu Andronic" <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Dear Duncan,
>>>>>> I discovered something interesting wrt to the licensing and
>>>>>> mirroring of user-contributed material on StackExchange. Please read below.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 9:00 PM, Duncan Murdoch
>>>>>> <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I'm not aware of a discussion on this, but I would say no.
>>>>>>>> Fragmentation is bad. Further fragmentation is worse.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> TL;DR
>>>>>>>> =====
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Actually I'd say all mailing lists except r-devel should be
>>>>>>>> moving to StackOverlow in the future (disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with it).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I would generally agree with you, except for a few points.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 1. I avoid StackOverflow, because they claim copyright on the
>>>>>>> compilation.
>>>>>>> As I read their terms of service, it would be illegal for anyone
>>>>>>> to download and duplicate all postings about R. So a posting
>>>>>>> there is only available as long as they choose to make it
>>>>>>> available. Postings to the mailing list are archived in several
>>>>>>> places.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> It seems that StackOverflow is officially proposing user-generated
>>>>>> content for download/mirroring:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2014/01/stack-exchange-cc-data-now-h
>>>>>> osted-by
>>>>>> -the-internet-archive/?cb=1
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "All community-contributed content on Stack Exchange is licensed
>>>>>> under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license. " And it is
>>>>>> currently being mirrored at least at the Internet Archive:
>>>>>> https://archive.org/details/stackexchange
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So, in principle, it would be possible/desirable to:
>>>>>> - spin the 'r' tag from StackOverflow and propose an
>>>>>> r.stackexchange.com at
>>>>>> http://area51.stackexchange.com/categories/8/technology . Such a
>>>>>> SE site would be similar to http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/
>>>>>> - involve R Core to give blessing for using the R logo, if necessary.
>>>>>> This would be similar to what Ubuntu does with AskUbuntu:
>>>>>> http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/5444/is-ask-ubuntu-official-ub
>>>>>> untu
>>>>>> - set a mirror on r-project.org for all the user content that is
>>>>>> produced by r.stackexchange.com , and thus allow R Core to keep
>>>>>> the info publicly available at all times. The mirroring on
>>>>>> Internet Archive would still hold.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 2. I think an interface like StackOverflow is better than the
>>>>>>> mailing list interface, and will eventually win out. R-help
>>>>>>> needs to do nothing, once someone puts together something like
>>>>>>> StackOverflow that attracts most of the people who give good
>>>>>>> answers, R-help will just fade away.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> The advantages for such a move are countless (especially wrt to
>>>>>> efficiently organizing R-related knowledge and directing users to
>>>>>> appropriate sources of info), so I won't go into that. I would
>>>>>> only note that most 'r-sig-*' MLs would become obsolete in such a
>>>>>> setup, and would be replaced by the much more efficient tagging
>>>>>> system of the SE Q&A web interface (for example, all posts
>>>>>> appropriate for r-sig-gui would simply be tagged with 'gui'; no
>>>>>> need for duplicated efforts of monitoring multiple mailing lists).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Opinions?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Liviu
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>>> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Do you know how to read?
>>> http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
>>> http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
>>> Do you know how to write?
>>> http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Do you know how to read?
> http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
> http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
> Do you know how to write?
> http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>
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