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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Frank E Harrell Jr Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 3:32 PM To: Ben Bolker Cc: r-help@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@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@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. ______________________________________________ R-help@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.