Re: [R] Web forum - should I make one?: an opinion
On Tue, 21-Sep-2010 at 12:55PM -0500, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
[...]
| Well, if You think the niche is filled, never mind, but I think R
| should have an official web forum. It can be stackoverflow (then
| I'd expect links from main R pages to it) or I (or someone else)
| can create it. Still, I think it is good idea to create one... More
| opinions?
Here's my opinion:
I detest web forums. I find them an incredibly slow way to find
anything useful. If a topic has more than 2 people who've made
comments, it's a research project itself to work out whose comment is
being commented on at what stage. I'm not interested in becoming an
investigative journalist. For years I've been puzzled why forums are
so popular when IMHO, a mailing list is infinitely simpler, faster and
more informative.
Then I realized that a huge difference is the fact that at least 90%
of internet users have probably never seen a good simple text based
email client that is capable of displaying posts in threads. Therefor
they've never experienced what I can do so easily. Were I constrained
to using something like Outlook to read mail, an infliction which many
people have, I wouldn't find it that useful.
One of the many advantages of what we use now is the fact that it's
easy for me to remove clutter by deleting threads of posts that I'm
not interested in following and saving those I wish to keep in
specific folders for future reference and searching. The archives can
be searched if there's something I haven't saved. Though they are not
as handy as having it on my own computer, it's still far better than
the forum interface.
|
| The R-* e-mail lists are the official venues and you can read/post via
| e-mail. There are also other means of interacting with the e-mail lists
| using Gmane and Nabble.
|
| Mailman is very good tool, but not for everything. And IMHO many people are
| more used to search, ask and work on forums than on mailinglists.
I've never had the experience of finding help that way which was
remotely as prompt or helpful as what the R-help list or other mailing
lists provide. (For example, try finding anything on VSN's Forum page
to do with ASReml.) But, sad to say, it probably *is* true that many
people are more used to doing things the difficult poke-and-hope way.
There are times when I feel as though I'm using electricity when many
people have never seen electricity and are using candles and water
wheels.
YMMV evidently.
--
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
___Patrick Connolly
{~._.~} Great minds discuss ideas
_( Y )_ Average minds discuss events
(:_~*~_:) Small minds discuss people
(_)-(_) . Eleanor Roosevelt
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
__
R-help@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.
Re: [R] Web forum - should I make one?
Siterer Yihui Xie x...@yihui.name: lists are easier to post messages, but I really believe they have too many disadvantages, e.g. (relatively) difficult to search, dull interface, HTML not welcome (I don't like HTML in emails, though), no lively images, no code highlighting, attachments often get chopped off, no RSS to subscribe, admins are still fighting with spams somehow manually (?), and imagine how painful it is for us to read the threaded web archives... Yeah, the lively images are a great help. And [using Firefox] I have such a big search problem. Seriously, remembering the good ol' days of UNIX and VMS where mailing lists were the only option, I shy away from web forums cos they tend to be flashy (Powerpoint on acid) and MORE difficult to search than my mailbox. I'm also a pretty lazy person, so I enjoy getting mails into my mailbox without having to think too hard, or open web browsers unnecessarily. Not that I have a lot to contribute to the list, but I have learned a great deal and see this list as one of the most important resources that exists (thanks to all list members who teach me new stuff every single day!!!) Just my $0.02. Siri. __ R-help@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] Web forum - should I make one?
Hello, this might be little off-topic, but still... I have not found any official web forum for R users. Did I look good? If not, I'm sorry and shame on me! :-) Such forums are very probably the most common way to share information about all sorts of problems, to ask and get answer. See http://forums.opensuse.org/ as an example. Admins, developers, users, do You think to have such forum would be useful? If yes, I can create and manage it. If You have any idea about its possible functionality and content, let me know. If it would help R community, I will invest my time and energy to it. :-) Best regards, -- Vojtěch Zeisek Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles Uni., Prague, CZ Institute of Botany, Academy of Science, Czech Republic Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.natur.cuni.cz/faculty-en?set_language=en http://www.ibot.cas.cz/?p=indexamp;site=en http://www.opensuse.org/ http://web.natur.cuni.cz/~zeisek/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. __ R-help@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.
Re: [R] Web forum - should I make one?
Did you look at: http://rwiki.sciviews.org/doku.php ? Kjetil 2010/9/21 Vojtěch Zeisek vojtech.zei...@opensuse.org: Hello, this might be little off-topic, but still... I have not found any official web forum for R users. Did I look good? If not, I'm sorry and shame on me! :-) Such forums are very probably the most common way to share information about all sorts of problems, to ask and get answer. See http://forums.opensuse.org/ as an example. Admins, developers, users, do You think to have such forum would be useful? If yes, I can create and manage it. If You have any idea about its possible functionality and content, let me know. If it would help R community, I will invest my time and energy to it. :-) Best regards, -- Vojtěch Zeisek Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles Uni., Prague, CZ Institute of Botany, Academy of Science, Czech Republic Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.natur.cuni.cz/faculty-en?set_language=en http://www.ibot.cas.cz/?p=indexamp;site=en http://www.opensuse.org/ http://web.natur.cuni.cz/~zeisek/ __ R-help@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@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.
Re: [R] Web forum - should I make one?
Before creating yet another R discussion venue, you may wish to look at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r The R-* e-mail lists are the official venues and you can read/post via e-mail. There are also other means of interacting with the e-mail lists using Gmane and Nabble. However, the Stack Overflow R forum has evolved as an independent online presence in the recent past, as an alternative for folks who prefer that mode of interaction. HTH, Marc Schwartz On Sep 21, 2010, at 11:40 AM, Kjetil Halvorsen wrote: Did you look at: http://rwiki.sciviews.org/doku.php ? Kjetil 2010/9/21 Vojtěch Zeisek vojtech.zei...@opensuse.org: Hello, this might be little off-topic, but still... I have not found any official web forum for R users. Did I look good? If not, I'm sorry and shame on me! :-) Such forums are very probably the most common way to share information about all sorts of problems, to ask and get answer. See http://forums.opensuse.org/ as an example. Admins, developers, users, do You think to have such forum would be useful? If yes, I can create and manage it. If You have any idea about its possible functionality and content, let me know. If it would help R community, I will invest my time and energy to it. :-) Best regards, -- Vojtěch Zeisek __ R-help@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.
Re: [R] Web forum - should I make one?
And of course there is also: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/r Cheers, T Contact Details:--- Contact me: tal.gal...@gmail.com | 972-52-7275845 Read me: www.talgalili.com (Hebrew) | www.biostatistics.co.il (Hebrew) | www.r-statistics.com (English) -- On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 6:55 PM, Marc Schwartz marc_schwa...@me.com wrote: Before creating yet another R discussion venue, you may wish to look at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r The R-* e-mail lists are the official venues and you can read/post via e-mail. There are also other means of interacting with the e-mail lists using Gmane and Nabble. However, the Stack Overflow R forum has evolved as an independent online presence in the recent past, as an alternative for folks who prefer that mode of interaction. HTH, Marc Schwartz On Sep 21, 2010, at 11:40 AM, Kjetil Halvorsen wrote: Did you look at: http://rwiki.sciviews.org/doku.php ? Kjetil 2010/9/21 VojtÄch Zeisek vojtech.zei...@opensuse.org: Hello, this might be little off-topic, but still... I have not found any official web forum for R users. Did I look good? If not, I'm sorry and shame on me! :-) Such forums are very probably the most common way to share information about all sorts of problems, to ask and get answer. See http://forums.opensuse.org/ as an example. Admins, developers, users, do You think to have such forum would be useful? If yes, I can create and manage it. If You have any idea about its possible functionality and content, let me know. If it would help R community, I will invest my time and energy to it. :-) Best regards, -- VojtÄch Zeisek __ R-help@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. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@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.
Re: [R] Web forum - should I make one?
Everyone is free to create as they please. My opinion is that between this list and stackexchange (as Tal pointed out), that there isn't a market for such a thing. If you want a web front-end to this list, such things exist, like nabble. Vojtěch Zeisek wrote: Hello, this might be little off-topic, but still... I have not found any official web forum for R users. Did I look good? If not, I'm sorry and shame on me! :-) Such forums are very probably the most common way to share information about all sorts of problems, to ask and get answer. See http://forums.opensuse.org/ as an example. Admins, developers, users, do You think to have such forum would be useful? If yes, I can create and manage it. If You have any idea about its possible functionality and content, let me know. If it would help R community, I will invest my time and energy to it. :-) Best regards, -- Vojtěch Zeisek Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles Uni., Prague, CZ Institute of Botany, Academy of Science, Czech Republic Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.natur.cuni.cz/faculty-en?set_language=en http://www.ibot.cas.cz/?p=indexamp;site=en http://www.opensuse.org/ http://web.natur.cuni.cz/~zeisek/ __ R-help@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@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.
Re: [R] Web forum - should I make one?
Hello Dne Út 21. září 2010 11:55:02 Marc Schwartz napsal(a): Before creating yet another R discussion venue, you may wish to look at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r My idea was about something like this, but more complex, with categories and tools. And only for R. :-) This looks like general developers discussion. When I go to front page, it is hard to find anything about R... And also I aimed to make it an official part of R's infrastructure (after talking to responsible people, of course). Well, if You think the niche is filled, never mind, but I think R should have an official web forum. It can be stackoverflow (then I'd expect links from main R pages to it) or I (or someone else) can create it. Still, I think it is good idea to create one... More opinions? The R-* e-mail lists are the official venues and you can read/post via e-mail. There are also other means of interacting with the e-mail lists using Gmane and Nabble. Mailman is very good tool, but not for everything. And IMHO many people are more used to search, ask and work on forums than on mailinglists. However, the Stack Overflow R forum has evolved as an independent online presence in the recent past, as an alternative for folks who prefer that mode of interaction. HTH, Marc Schwartz On Sep 21, 2010, at 11:40 AM, Kjetil Halvorsen wrote: Did you look at: http://rwiki.sciviews.org/doku.php ? Wiki is not tool I mean. Well, I found there only one not working link and one link to mostly Chinese forum... So nothing useful, I thing. Kjetil Best regards, Vojtěch Zeisek 2010/9/21 Vojtěch Zeisek vojtech.zei...@opensuse.org: Hello, this might be little off-topic, but still... I have not found any official web forum for R users. Did I look good? If not, I'm sorry and shame on me! :-) Such forums are very probably the most common way to share information about all sorts of problems, to ask and get answer. See http://forums.opensuse.org/ as an example. Admins, developers, users, do You think to have such forum would be useful? If yes, I can create and manage it. If You have any idea about its possible functionality and content, let me know. If it would help R community, I will invest my time and energy to it. :-) Best regards, -- Vojtěch Zeisek -- Vojtěch Zeisek Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles Uni., Prague, CZ Institute of Botany, Academy of Science, Czech Republic Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.natur.cuni.cz/faculty-en?set_language=en http://www.ibot.cas.cz/?p=indexamp;site=en http://www.opensuse.org/ http://web.natur.cuni.cz/~zeisek/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. __ R-help@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.
Re: [R] Web forum - should I make one?
Hello, it's good idea, i'm with you in this project. I know very well Joomla, VB forum, IPB forum, PHP forum, SMF forum... Best regards, Adnen CHOCKRI Department of Quantitative Methods , University of Economics and Management, Sfax, Tunisia Community of the Ubuntu GNU/Linux 2010/9/21 VojtÄch Zeisek vojtech.zei...@opensuse.org Hello, this might be little off-topic, but still... I have not found any official web forum for R users. Did I look good? If not, I'm sorry and shame on me! :-) Such forums are very probably the most common way to share information about all sorts of problems, to ask and get answer. See http://forums.opensuse.org/ as an example. Admins, developers, users, do You think to have such forum would be useful? If yes, I can create and manage it. If You have any idea about its possible functionality and content, let me know. If it would help R community, I will invest my time and energy to it. :-) Best regards, -- VojtÄch Zeisek Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles Uni., Prague, CZ Institute of Botany, Academy of Science, Czech Republic Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.natur.cuni.cz/faculty-en?set_language=en http://www.ibot.cas.cz/?p=indexamp;site=en http://www.opensuse.org/ http://web.natur.cuni.cz/~zeisek/ http://web.natur.cuni.cz/%7Ezeisek/ __ R-help@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. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@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.
Re: [R] Web forum - should I make one?
Ahh... I have almost forgotten the forum links I put in the R Wiki four years ago! Thanks for reminding me! As many Chinese users know, the Chinese R forum at http://cos.name/cn/ is pretty mature now. From my experience in maintaining this forum, I can fully understand Vojtěch's proposal, and in fact I also considered this years ago (see my failure at http://cos.name/en/). Mailing lists are easier to post messages, but I really believe they have too many disadvantages, e.g. (relatively) difficult to search, dull interface, HTML not welcome (I don't like HTML in emails, though), no lively images, no code highlighting, attachments often get chopped off, no RSS to subscribe, admins are still fighting with spams somehow manually (?), and imagine how painful it is for us to read the threaded web archives... In all, we don't have to refuse technologies, and I totally agree with an official web forum for R. I am also willing to help if the R core members decide to start such a project. P. S. I was really surprised quite a few weeks ago when I noticed the Omegahat project had set up a blog site (http://omegahat.wordpress.com)! Welcome to the web of the 21st century! was what I thought to myself. Regards, Yihui -- Yihui Xie xieyi...@gmail.com Phone: 515-294-2465 Web: http://yihui.name Department of Statistics, Iowa State University 2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA 2010/9/21 Vojtěch Zeisek vojtech.zei...@opensuse.org: Hello On Sep 21, 2010, at 11:40 AM, Kjetil Halvorsen wrote: Did you look at: http://rwiki.sciviews.org/doku.php ? Wiki is not tool I mean. Well, I found there only one not working link and one link to mostly Chinese forum... So nothing useful, I thing. Kjetil Best regards, Vojtěch Zeisek __ R-help@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.
Re: [R] Web forum - should I make one?
Hello Dne St 22. září 2010 00:30:26 Yihui Xie napsal(a): Ahh... I have almost forgotten the forum links I put in the R Wiki four years ago! Thanks for reminding me! As many Chinese users know, the Chinese R forum at http://cos.name/cn/ is pretty mature now. From my experience in maintaining this forum, I can fully understand Vojtěch's proposal, and in fact I also considered this years ago (see my failure at http://cos.name/en/). Mailing lists are easier to post messages, but I really believe they have too many disadvantages, e.g. (relatively) difficult to search, dull interface, HTML not welcome (I don't like HTML in emails, though), no lively images, no code highlighting, attachments often get chopped off, no RSS to subscribe, admins are still fighting with spams somehow manually (?), and imagine how painful it is for us to read the threaded web archives... Yes! That's where I point to. IMHO the best would be if whole R site would be running some modern content management system (Adnen mentioned some of them). I personally like Drupal (http://drupal.org/) - easy, user friendly, secure and tons of great functions. In all, we don't have to refuse technologies, and I totally agree with an official web forum for R. I am also willing to help if the R core members decide to start such a project. I'm not professional web developer, but I maintain several webs running Drupal and I think I can maintain one more. :-) And if someone else would work on it with me, it would be great. How does the R core members decision happens? Should I ask someone from there directly? P. S. I was really surprised quite a few weeks ago when I noticed the Omegahat project had set up a blog site (http://omegahat.wordpress.com)! Welcome to the web of the 21st century! was what I thought to myself. Current R's main web is really not example of good web... But to remake whole R's web is much more bigger task... Regards, Yihui -- Yihui Xie xieyi...@gmail.com Phone: 515-294-2465 Web: http://yihui.name Department of Statistics, Iowa State University 2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA All the best, Vojtěch 2010/9/21 Vojtěch Zeisek vojtech.zei...@opensuse.org: Hello On Sep 21, 2010, at 11:40 AM, Kjetil Halvorsen wrote: Did you look at: http://rwiki.sciviews.org/doku.php ? Wiki is not tool I mean. Well, I found there only one not working link and one link to mostly Chinese forum... So nothing useful, I thing. Kjetil Best regards, Vojtěch Zeisek -- Vojtěch Zeisek Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles Uni., Prague, CZ Institute of Botany, Academy of Science, Czech Republic Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux http://www.natur.cuni.cz/faculty-en?set_language=en http://www.ibot.cas.cz/?p=indexamp;site=en http://www.opensuse.org/ http://web.natur.cuni.cz/~zeisek/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. __ R-help@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.
