On 3/30/2007 7:34 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
> Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>>
>> But the wiki doesn't offer a way to ask questions. I'd be just as
>> happy to answer questions there as here, but there are none there to
>> answer
>> (and the advice there is to ask questions here).
>>
>> I don't know how to organize a wiki to make it easy to ask and
>> answer questions. It's a reasonably good way to collect reference
>> information, but it's not very well suited to Q&A.
>>
> The way to ask questions in the Wiki is to micro-vandalize it :-)))))))
>
> Since anyone can edit, if I don't know how to use some function,
> I can _create_ this page and fill it with my doubts - in the hope
> that someone will then fix it latter.
>
> Example:
>
> rnorm
>
> This is a very weird function, because things like rnorm(0.975)
> should return 1.96, but returns numeric(0)
>
> And then someone would either rename the page to qnorm, or write
> a new rnorm page.
If entering a new page is really the way to ask a question, then you
should write this on the front page, and as a possible way to contribute
on the getting-started page. It would also be a good idea to tell
people like me how to find those questions. ("Recent Edits" seems a
little too broad, with too little in the way of subject matter in the
comments, but maybe that's just because nobody's asking questions yet.)
And it would be a good idea to seed the wiki with a lot of questions,
just to get some activity going.
And maybe set up a page for pointers to questions that are languishing
unanswered? I think the key is to make it easy to ask a question and
easy to answer one, so don't put too much bureaucracy into the process.
Duncan Murdoch
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