Timeline for A +30 question closed as not constructive although there is much agreement it should be kept open?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
22 events
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| May 23, 2017 at 12:36 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://stackoverflow.com/ with https://stackoverflow.com/
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| Mar 20, 2017 at 10:31 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/
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| Apr 24, 2014 at 13:12 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Migration of MSO links to MSE links
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| Aug 2, 2011 at 13:59 | comment | added | Lasse V. Karlsen Mod | I must confess to not entirely understanding your comment here George, but worry not, the question has already accrued 2 close-votes, no doubt it will take care of itself. | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 13:55 | comment | added | George Stocker |
@Lasse the only problem I have with the edit is that there's still a long standing amount of votes that have to deal with things that aren't R specific, which discourages people from answering, and makes it tougher for people to find the gems.
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| Aug 2, 2011 at 13:36 | comment | added | Gavin Simpson | I have edited the Q. Is this now acceptable or have I shot wide? | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 12:59 | comment | added | Lasse V. Karlsen Mod | So how about this. I remove the lock, and reopen the question, and it is edited to remove the "what kinds of things for R development do you like" style? In other words, make the question sound more like the first sentence - What tools should a professional R developer have? instead of the last sentence - I am also interested in knowing the tools that exist for other languages but are missing for R development.? I'm not saying that a list of such tools are not going to help, but get rid of the "what do you like" nature of the whole thing. | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 12:50 | comment | added | Gavin Simpson | @Lasse The Q did mention what tools are available. That can be answered and verified. We could have edited that Q to remove the subjective elements people seem to have objected to, and we should have. But to my mind that wouldn't have altered the spirit in which the Q was asked and Answered by most people. The Answers supplied were generally statements of fact that could be verified. | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 12:30 | comment | added | Lasse V. Karlsen Mod | I agree on that score, but usually one can verify that the answer is also correct. If I ask you how to calculate something specific, there are plenty of ways to do that, and you will of course post your favorite method. However, I can still verify that your method does in fact calculate what I asked for. If I ask you what tools you use, I cannot do that, I can't judge the correctness of your answer. Now, I agree that some parts can be judged, but not everything, and the "list of X" questions are according to existing policy, not welcome. | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 12:27 | comment | added | Gavin Simpson | @Lasse I disagree that these aren't Answers. Every Answer is subjective and ones own opinion about how to best Answer the Q posed. The entire SO site is like that - most Qs don't get as much traction because if a workable Answer is provided, Users don't tend to pile in with other Answers when there are newer Qs to tackle. | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 12:02 | comment | added | Lasse V. Karlsen Mod | But the questions are interesting, that's why we're here. The problem is that they don't invite answers, they invite opinions. | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 11:49 | comment | added | Gavin Simpson | @Cody I didn't say it should be limited to [r]. If you don't want them on SO, why aren't they deleted instead of being left for posterity closed? The very fact that developing for R has some very specific requirements necessitates this sort of Q so that developers can see what is available, why people use them and select from the range of tools that suits them. I'm sure every other language has similar needs. Why aren't these Qs interesting? | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 11:48 | comment | added | Joris Meys | @Cody Gray : Developing R is different from developing in Java or Python. I see no counterpart of any of the packages Hadley mentioned in other languages I know. What attracts me to SO, is the fact that I can ask programming-related questions about R and exchange ideas with R experts, including members of the R core development team and authors of some of the most important packages (Dirk Eddelbeutel, Hadley Wickham, Joshua Ulrich, Gavin Simpson, ...). Which tools they use for developing those most important packages, is valid information for me. Which is now locked and closed... | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 11:39 | comment | added | Cody Gray | @Gavin: That appears to be an extremely biased response from someone who is knowledgeable about R. C# has some really neat language-specific features, and some specific workflows for testing and packaging code. I don't understand why R is any different here. I'm not contesting whether or not these things exist for R, I'm asking why they're unique. And no, SO isn't full of them now, but that's because we've consistently closed such questions as off-topic. You're asking for an exception to be created to that policy, and I'm asking why that exception should be limited only to R. | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 11:38 | comment | added | Gavin Simpson | @Cody because R has some language-specific features (tight interplay with LaTeX), specific workflows for testing, packaging code etc. SO isn't full of these things and will never become full of these. Once a question like this is posed for a given tag/language, it would become the single place for reasoned, non-argumentative Answers. Anyone else tries to ask something similar, they'll get the down-vote, vote to close combo smackdown. The [r] tag has close to 6000 Qs. A handful at best are of this sort. I don't expect any other language/tag to be any different. | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 11:34 | comment | added | Gavin Simpson | -1 The original Q has nothing to do with "Hidden features of R". | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 11:33 | comment | added | Cody Gray | @Joris: Why couch this issue in terms of R, specifically? What makes this question different when asked in terms of the R programming language, as opposed to the same question asked about any programming language? And then ask yourself if that's really what you want SO to become: "laundry list" questions of "best practices", "development tools", "hidden features", "recommended workflows", etc. for all of the popular and not-so-popular programming languages. | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 11:23 | comment | added | Joris Meys | Sorry to disagree, but this is clearly a misinterpretation of that question. Developing tools for R goes far beyond "hidden features". It has to do with the workflow programming add-on packages for R, and is for any R developer very valid information. | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 10:59 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | updated to reflect that info | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 10:59 | history | edited | Jeff Atwood | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 337 characters in body
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| Aug 2, 2011 at 10:55 | comment | added | Cody Gray | I can't help but notice that Hidden Features Of R? has also been locked and closed. Not to mention, exceptions like this are a common source of confusion and fodder for "why was my question closed if this other one was allowed" Meta questions. I personally find the distinction difficult to explain. | |
| Aug 2, 2011 at 10:48 | history | answered | Jeff Atwood | CC BY-SA 3.0 |