[R] Packages - a great resource, but hard to find the right one

[Thaden, John J]

Antony Unwin <unwin at math.uni-augsburg.de> and Johannes 
Huesing <johannes at huesing.name> discussed ways to assist
navigation of the universe of R packages.

AU: 
>>> ...R is a language and the suggestions so far seem to  
>>> me like dictionary suggestions, whereas maybe what John
>>> is looking for is something more like a thesarus.
JH:
>> This is hard to do in a collaborative effort. One analogue
>> is the HOWTOs vs the man pages which I see in Linux. Some
>> of the HOWTOs are outstanding, the only problem they are
>> facing is that they tend to be out of date.
   ...
>> I am still putting some hope into the R Wiki. To my 
>> dismay it is also package oriented, not method-oriented. 
>> I tend to think that there is a chance of controlled 
>> documentation if somebody set out an infrastructure 
>> going beyond the current one. Anything like a classification
>> of methods.

What about Views? http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Views/
Is this effort alive? Views allow easy downloading of packages 
grouped by methodology, with an accompanying overview.  But 
Views would seem to be at risk of going out of date.    
 
Or what about what an approach seen on many commercial sites?
What if CRAN package download pages had a mechanism for submitting 
reviews and for reading reviews of others?  I notice such reviews 
of books and software often mention competing products. For those
interfacing with CRAN via download.packages() and 
update.packages() commands, or via 'packages' menu items,
could these be amended to invite users to submit/read reviews?

Or this 'amazon.com' idea: if the community were not resistant
to a login mechanism, what if CRAN pages named 10 packages, 
related to the featured one by how frequently recent 
downloaders also downloaded them?

AU:
>>> As the software editor of the Journal of Statistical 
>>> Software I suggested we should review R packages.
>>> No one has shown any enthusiasm for this suggestion  
>>> but I think it would help.  Any volunteers?
JH:
>> Thing is, I may like to volunteer, but not in the 
>> "here's a package for you to review by week 32" way. 
>> Rather in the way that I search a package which fits
>> my problem.
AU: 
> That's what I was hoping for.
JH:
>> One package lets me down and I'd like to know other users 
>> and the maintainer about it. The other one works black magic
>> and I'd like to drop a raving review about it. This needs an
>> infrastructure with a low barrier to entry. A wiki is not 
>> the worst idea if the initial infrastructure is geared at
>> addressing problems rather than packages.
AU:
> We should differentiate between rave reviews of features 
> that just happened to be very useful to someone and reviews 
> of a package as a whole.  Both have their place and at the 
> moment we don't have either.
> If you are willing to review an R package or aspects of 
> R for JSS please let me know.

On the face of it, JSS reviews sound like a good idea.  But
is there something wrong with the www.jstatsoft.com site?
Today, at least, I cannot connect. Would a Google search on 
site:r-projects.org be likely to find a JSS review?  Would
the review be freely downloadable?  Would it too become out-
dated?  I'll contact you, Antony, about a review I may be 
qualified to write.

-John Thaden
Research Assistant Professor of Geriatrics
College of Medicine
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Little Rock, Arkansas USA

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