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Re: st: RE: A wish list for Statalist
I have been finding the various discussions, arguments, etc., being
tossed around regarding the possible transition of Statalist to a
forum format highly interesting. I'd like to summarize some of the
pros and cons. You will have to excuse the formatting since I can't
use the quick bulletin board coding (bbcode) to put [code] [/code]
tags around my text and have it appear in monospaced format.
Forum: Status quo:
Topic areas no
Congruent threads no
Announcements in "Sticky threads" What's a "sticky thread?"
Decreased access Universal access
Requires logon and browsing* Can see new messages as they arrive**
Richer tools for response Simpler tools for response
More work to set up/maintain Its working now and ain't broke
* The forum I administer can send eMails of new posts immediately or
as short interval digests, daily digests or weekly digests.
** For those of us using web mail we still have to logon to see messages
On the wiki front, I see it as a FAQ on steroids. As it stands now we
have wonderfully comprehensive manuals on one hand and the list on the
other. Some subscribe to the Stata Journal and from what I have seen
it, it is a valuable resource that lies more in the middle. What role
I see a wiki fulfilling would be something the extremely practical "33
Tips" booklet to which a number of listers have contributed. There is
an information niche between manual and list that could become slowly
populated with tips that are provided over and over again. This
wouldn't prevent all RTFM-type questions, but could provide an
increasingly comprehensive resource.
I'd like to reflect on a number of impressions that people have. It
is not right to equate HTML eMail and an HTML forum application - they
are different applications. HTML email with "stationary" and lots of
graphics is an abuse of bandwidth and I side with people who rail
against it. That being said, limited html in emails can be used to
good effect and adds very little to the message overhead. HTML in
forums can be limited to some very basic formatting tags, all under
administrator control. Most commonly forums use bbcode, a form of
pseudo markup that is filtered and translated into real markup. This
limits codes and helps prevent inadvertant or malicious use of codes
that might "break" the page rendering or worse still, compromise the
underlying database.
While we are on the subject of bandwidth. I didn't strip the repeated
message quoting that shows up below, but I suspect that eMails from a
forum which maintains thread congruency and sequencing would require
less bandwidth than the list currently generates. And further on the
congruency issue, at this time I count no less than 6 threads titled
"A wish list for Statalist." It is hard to know who is responding to
whom and I have seen it become a source of misunderstanding on many
occasions.
On the subject of time commitment. No-one has a lot of time on their
hands, including the hardworking StataCorp employees. Still, I think
StataCorp should look at the business case for hosting and maintaining
the backend for a web forum. Many hardware and software manufacturers
have support forums for their userbase. I have participated both as a
questioner and a responder and can confirm that they can be of great
help.
DCE
On 1/3/07, Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
I don't think Statalist is perfect, but I want to make
just three comments on Roy's suggestions.
1. Brainstorming about what does not work very well
and what might work better is all interesting and worthwhile,
but the suggestions I have seen so far involve
other people doing more work -- and no volunteers to help --
indeed explicit denials of intention to get more involved.
2. The comments here about StataCorp are to me unclear and
unconvincing. I can see absolutely no benefit in StataCorp
disengaging from Statalist and much loss. Note that StataCorp
hosts the Statalist FAQ, for example. In the several years that
I have been maintaining the FAQ page that hosting has been
objected to once that I know of -- as a matter of principle --
by someone no longer a member of the list. But the benefits of
that hosting are considerable, as a few moments' thought should
indicate. My own IT set-up certainly rules out my hosting the FAQ
-- I don't even enjoy free access to my "own" webpage --
nor would Marcello welcome the imposition of yet another
responsibility.
3. The name Statalist has been grabbed, but no one should feel in any
way inhibited or prohibited from setting up their own list/forum/blog
for discussion of Stata in their own way. Show us!
Nick
[email protected]
roy wada
> It has been over a year since Statalist was taken off the Yahoo Group
> listings. My delivery of Statalist Digest has been erratic, sometimes
> missing up to 90% of the postings. Judging by the recent drop
> in postings,
> other people might be experiencing similar problems.
>
> Reading through the Digest is not as fun as it used to be.
> Too much to go
> through before getting to the point.
>
> Here is my personal wish list for Statlist.
>
> 1. Make HTML as the default
>
> With free online accounts, most people should be able to
> access HTML. We
> really should move on and make do without the HTML gibberish
> and the many
> reminders not to use it.
>
> 2. Updated forum format
>
> There are "canned" solutions for setting up a web-based
> forum. These forums
> are easy to use, easy on the eyes, and easy to understand. I
> really would
> like to see Statalist upgraded into one of these web-based
> format for forums
> (HTML-based, mind you). If you don't know what I am talking
> about, see these
> examples:
>
> http://www.easternuswx.com/bb/index.php?showforum=15
> http://forums.slickdeals.net/
>
> With the updated format, the administrator could, for example, set up
> several sub-topics, such as installation, programming, data cleaning,
> estimation and inference, and advanced statistics. If someone
> wants to see
> everything in one place, as is currently the case, you should
> set up such a
> sub-topic (except it shows everything).
>
> In these forums, the newest postings appeas at the top and
> still keep the
> thread intact.
>
> The administator can also place the existing guide to
> Statalist in the form
> of a "sticky" at the very top of the forum, where it might
> actually be read
> by someone. These forums usually have a few designated moderators
> (volunteers) who can occasionally clean up threads, fix
> errors, discourage
> trolls, etc.
>
> Such set ups are much kinder to the new users who have in the
> past tended to
> get left behind. The new users usually have problems with
> data cleaning, so
> that's where they should be found within the forums, away
> from those who
> might not be well disposed towards that sort of thing and
> spare us the
> clutter.
>
> It is also much easier to post on these types of forums
> without having to go
> through email accounts, fixing the subject heading (something
> I usually
> forget), and cross your (my) fingers that no mistake was made
> because I
> can't come back and fix it.
>
> As Statalist currently exists, the posters cannot even change
> their own
> thread titles and it just doesn't look good. Statalist
> currently works more
> like a BB (bulletin board) where everyone is shouting to
> everyone else. It's
> messy, too noisy. Archiving of every errors and typos is
> unsightly. Valuable
> information is in there, but not in a useful format. I have
> hundreds of old
> Statalist Digests sitting in my email account untouched and
> unread, I am
> going to erase them soon.
>
> The HTML-based forums can usually accomodate anonymized
> accounts, which
> minimizes abuse. I currently get much more spams when I post
> on Statalist.
>
> 3. The Stata Corp should be "in" or "out"
>
> Statalist has been a valuable resource for the Stata Corp.
> Getting people to
> donate their own time and effort towards helping other users
> what more can a
> company ask for. As it has been previously pointed out,
> having Statalist
> hosted on the Stata Corp website presents a serious conflict
> of interest.
> People are less likely to volunteer information when it appears (as
> sometimes is the case) it is something the Stata Corps should
> have handled
> by itself. It also presents a dilution of responsibility
> because the line of
> responsibiliy isn't clear.
>
> I personally would like to see the Stata Corp to either be
> actively involved
> in the management of Statalist, including setting up a
> user-friendly forum
> mentioned above, or completely be disengaged from Statalist
> by having it
> hosted on somewhere else. It should be in or out, without
> giving a murky
> signal that it may come to the rescue should something go
> wrong. If the
> Stata Corp chooses to stay out, there's always a space
> somewhere, especially
> among the academic domains. The bandwidth requirement for Statalist
> shouldn't be too big.
>
> Of course, Statalist has been maintained in the past by a
> number of generous
> people. There are good reasons for doing it this way or that way. I
> personally would prefer to see something less demanding, a
> little more
> organized, and a bit more egalitarian. I suppose someone
> could go set it up,
> but it would be nice if Statalist did all that.
*
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* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
--
David Elliott
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
