This thread has generated a number of comments. My reading of the messages is (1) There are a number of ways to find packages, no one is perfect. (2) Packages vary in quality and a review process that would help identify better packages and suggest improvements for packages would be helpful.
As far as finding packages goes, I believe that R would be a better tool if a package finder were built into the R distribution and added to the menus presented by the R GUI. The package finder would allow the user to enter search words and the package finder would return a series of packages along with brief précis to each package and a link to package reviews. I know that this suggestion would require a lot of work both by the R maintainers (to develop the search system and make it a part of the GUI), package developers (to add some form of metadata to there packages) and the R community (to write the reviews), but I think it is important if R is to continue to grow and develop. Currently we have a wonderful platform which has grown tremendously over the years, which is in danger of becoming less useful that it deserves to be because of a lack of a centralized, modern, easily searchable package finding system. Thanks to all who contributed to the discussion. John John Sorkin M.D., Ph.D. Chief, Biostatistics and Informatics Baltimore VA Medical Center GRECC, University of Maryland School of Medicine Claude D. Pepper OAIC, University of Maryland Clinical Nutrition Research Unit, and Baltimore VA Center Stroke of Excellence University of Maryland School of Medicine Division of Gerontology Baltimore VA Medical Center 10 North Greene Street GRECC (BT/18/GR) Baltimore, MD 21201-1524 (Phone) 410-605-7119 (Fax) 410-605-7913 (Please call phone number above prior to faxing) [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> "hadley wickham" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 11/24/07 10:56 AM >>> > What do you mean here? Surely all packages authors aim to provide reliable > and effective software. If they know that they are offering something > unstable, they should say so clearly. In fact, they should wait until it is > stable. Most R users are not researchers, but users. Now I'm beginning to wonder if you have ever used R ;) Yes, they should wait until it is stable and free of bugs, but does this really happen in reality? The quality of packages varies widely, and even in the best package it's difficult to find all bugs before release? > This web reference shows that you are thinking of a quite different type of > review. What help would that be to a user? (However helpful it could be to > another researcher). I was suggesting that data would be useful when selecting which packages to review, not as part of the review. > You're right, the thread has moved on. No one would read either 1000 > reviews or 1000 brief paragraphs. Reviewing should help to raise standards. > Good reviewers would point out connections with other packages and make > comparisons. (Which does take us partway back to the original thread.) Which moves somewhat back towards my original suggestion of review articles. To me, an article which compared and contrasted four or five packages on a given topic would be much more useful than an article which reviewed only a single package. I think basing reviews around a specific topic/methodology would be more useful than basing them around a single package. Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ ______________________________________________ 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. Confidentiality Statement: This email message, including any attachments, is for th...{{dropped:6}} ______________________________________________ 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.
