Hi, I have given up on "R" with any topic on Google quite some time ago (because bits from fragmented postscript/pdf files show up, for example) - but using "r-devel" with topic normally gives me enough. YMMV.
HTL 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. 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 ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
