[R] opinion - sharing problem data and other stuff.

[Jeff Newmiller]

Hear, hear. Getting the questioner to slow down and look at what they really want is key, because if they don't know what they want then their question will be unclear, and I hate answering a question that was never really what the OP was looking for in the first place.

One problem I have encountered is questions where key information is in a linked web page that goes away, rendering the posting archive useless. I suppose as long as gists don't "age out" they can be okay for some questions, but I am still way less likely to go digging there to answer questions in the first place.
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Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On August 13, 2014 2:50:16 PM PDT, Sarah Goslee <sarah.goslee at gmail.com> wrote:
>Hi John,
>
>People do sometimes link to external data and code, though I'm not
>sure I've seen any in that particular format.
>
>But, two things to consider.
>
>A. I'm lazy. If the problem is fully-formed in the email, I'm more
>likely to try to solve it than if I have to go download something and
>figure out what's in it. (Even leaving aside the potential issues with
>downloading random things.)
>
>B. A *small* reproducible example is usually a good thing. There are
>not that many cases where the whole big dataset is necessary. Further,
>the exercise of creating a small reproducible example is often enough
>to solve the problem, without ever needed to bother R-help at all.
>
>Granted, I'm also likely to skip posts to the list with enormous
>dput() data dumps too. I'm a big fan of the "small" part.
>
>Sarah
>
>On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 5:41 PM, John McKown
><john.archie.mckown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is just a thought that has occurred to me. I don't know if it is
>> an "Oh, WOW!" or an "Are you KIDDING?!?" type thought. So I thought
>> I'd ask here.
>>
>> I use github for a few things. Nothing great, but maybe nice. Anyway,
>> one feature of GitHub is the GIST feature. What I am used to github
>> being for is a project consisting of many complete files. A gist can
>> contain many files, but is really for a set of snippets. Such as code
>> sequences. Or maybe the output from a dput().
>>
>> If I have a "big" problem where I think that having all the data and
>> my attempted solutions available, I think it would be far kinder of
>me
>> to put a _good_ synopsis of the problem here on the list. And a
>> clickable URL to the gist I have created for the problem. That would
>> decrease the bandwidth on the email server. And save space on it.
>And,
>> lets face it, in many cases only a few people are going to really
>look
>> at any given problem "in depth", so why have a huge email go out to
>> the entire community?
>>
>> My idea may not be useful, I really am not sure. But my motive is
>> trying to keep everybody's inbox from overflowing. And make it easier
>> to supply really good data, but only to those who are interested.
>>
>> Thanks for any feedback.
>>
>>