>>>>> "Duncan" == Duncan Murdoch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>>>> on Mon, 06 Mar 2006 19:21:50 -0500 writes:
Duncan> On 3/6/2006 4:09 PM, Tim Brown wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I know this is a long shot but I just wanted to throw it
>> out there. I have lately been using R a lot and have
>> found that it is basically impossible to find any code
>> help or answers via google searching because the name "R"
>> is simply not explicit enough.
Duncan> That hasn't been my experience. Could you post some
Duncan> examples of your searches?
Duncan> For example, "find length of array in R" turns up
Duncan> R-specific answers in 4th and 9th positions on the
Duncan> first page of results. Using "find length of array,
Duncan> R Project" turns up 6 out of 10 hits referencing R.
in which google? The one in the US, in Europe, in China, or ... ?
As we probably all know the censorship differs from place to
place .. and it seems one has no way to circumvent
Big-Brother Google's decisions anymore.
Sorry, but I couldn't refrain; I had been very disappointed by these news.
Martin Maechler
Duncan> For
>> every other popular program or programming language a
>> simple search with the name of the program and your
>> problem brings up something pretty close to the answer,
>> its usually just a matter of phrasing it so the results
>> you are looking come up in your search (e.g. "find length
>> of array, Matlab"). Try a similar web search for R and
>> you will learn nothing -- Why? because the letter "R" is
>> on almost every web page on the planet.
>>
>> I'm not just whining here, I think this is a really
>> serious problem. On the web, "findability" is perhaps
>> the single most important feature of any product or
>> program. The unique beauty of the Web anyone who solves
>> any problem can post the answer almost anywhere want, a
>> search engines will index it and serve it up to someone
>> looking for a solution to that problem. Of course it
>> doesn't quite work like that but its pretty close if you
>> trying to find out how to program something in most
>> languages and programs. You can't do this in R because
>> its name is not unique enough, and that seriously hampers
>> the ability of both new and expert users to accomplish
>> things quickly. I realize that there is the R-project
>> website and so on, but the decentralized nature of the
>> web assures that not not everyone will post their answers
>> there and people such as me who search google first
>> rather than going straight to a single site will have a
>> hard time finding answers.
>>
>> So seriously, has there ever been any discussion about
>> renaming R so that people's hard work on making this
>> kick-butt program can be shared and searched with the
>> same facility that other programs enjoy. It could be
>> something as simple as "R plus" ;) just anything that
>> makes it unique enough that R program pages aren't
>> indexed with 100 billion pages that happen to have a
>> single R on them for some reason.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Tim
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Duncan> ______________________________________________
Duncan> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
Duncan> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
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