RE: st: Statalist in a forum format

["Schaffer, Mark E" <M.E.Schaffer@hw.ac.uk>]

Just my $0.02 - I think Stas makes some important points about the usability of statalist.org, and I will take the liberty of reproducing the ones that I think are most important:

>>> syntax highlighting similar to
>>> that of the Do-Editor, and automatic links to the online help files
>>> (http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?whatever) that are added once a Stata
>>> command is being identified in the code section.

>>> A more prominent use
>>> of tags is a must for the forum to be usable as a reference, rather
>>> than a hit-and-run (ask-and-wait) system that it has historically
>>> been.

>>> Users should be required to use tags, or at least
>>> asked to confirm when they are submitting a question with no tags.

--Mark

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-
> statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Stas Kolenikov
> Sent: 08 April 2014 15:11
> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: st: Statalist in a forum format
> 
> Thanks to those who replied ---
> 
> Nick, I see now that options like SO/CV were considered, and you
> present some good arguments why they don't quite work like statalist.
> 
> Marcello, thanks for giving me the compliment of an expert sample
> manipulator :) ! I could definitely post this on statalist.org, but it
> would be tucked under "Using the forum" where it may or may not have
> generated the discussion. Carrying it on in both formats is difficult
> to keep track of. As the trad statalist moderator, have you seen
> people signing off the list before it officially closes?
> 
> Richard, I don't think StackExchange is more difficult to use than any
> other forum, but Nick and Sergiy have disagreed. So I lost here 1:2.
> There's more stuff floating around on your screen, but most of this
> stuff is useful and functional, to the extent that I got so used to it
> that the lighter functionality of statalist.org forum did not seem
> sufficient to me anymore. It's akin to running models with factor
> variables using -xi- vs. the current implementation that achieves the
> same plus supports -margins-.
> 
> Sergiy, I agree that hanging out with nice people is cool, and most
> users would get their questions answered by these nice people in
> whatever format, but I have been arguing for functionality and
> fit-for-purpose. The developers time is an interesting question, and
> that's up to Stata Corp to decide upon. To some extent, though, a
> better site for the forum might mean that the users would have to
> spend less time searching for a reliable answer, but I am not a
> usability expert to provide any substantiated evidence to support
> this.
> 
> 
> -- Stas Kolenikov, PhD, PStat (ASA, SSC)
> -- Principal Survey Scientist, Abt SRBI
> -- Opinions stated in this email are mine only, and do not reflect the
> position of my employer
> -- http://stas.kolenikov.name
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 7:33 AM, Marcello Pagano
> <pagano@hsph.harvard.edu> wrote:
> > Two things to add,
> >
> > 1. The market should be asked to decide. No one is stopping anyone from
> > drifting to Stack Overflow and/or Cross Validated. We can coexist.
> > We can also improve.
> >
> > 2. Stas is an expert survey person and knows very well how to influence a
> > sample, not, of course, that he ever would, but why is this discussion not
> > being carried out on Statalist.org? Is it possible that the view of
> > new-/old-Statalist might be skewed one way or another by those still
> > remaining on old-Statalist versus those already migrated to the forum?
> >
> > m.p.
> >
> >
> >
> > On 4/8/2014 7:39 AM, Nick Cox wrote:
> >>
> >> Stas raises many questions and makes several positive suggestions and I
> >> won't pretend to address all, but I don't agree with his strongest
> >> pitch. (If I had thought that people migrating to Stack Overflow or
> >> Cross Validated was the best way to fix Statalist's slowly growing
> >> problems, I would
> >> have recommended that during earlier discussions.)
> >>
> >> Stack Overflow (SO; a large forum for programming questions, which
> >> recently passed 7 million questions (!)) and Cross Validated (CV; a
> >> smaller forum for statistics questions, which is approaching 35,000
> >> questions) have both in existence for a few years now. I am positive
> >> about both and have been an active contributor to both for more than a
> >> year. Indeed a glance at
> >>
> >> http://stackoverflow.com/tags/stata/topusers
> >>
> >> http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/stata/topusers
> >>
> >> will show that Stata questions on both lists are mostly handled by
> >> people also active here on Statalist.
> >>
> >> However, the picture that Stas paints is in my view rosier than the
> >> real prospects on those sites for Stata users.
> >>
> >> 1. The two sites divide questions linked to Stata very awkwardly as
> >> programming questions belong on SO and statistics questions belong on CV
> >> and questions involving elements of both have to jump one way or the
> >> other, as cross-postings are strongly discouraged. What's more,
> >> programming questions as construed on SO don't really include
> >> introductory or beginner questions about code, which are much more
> >> welcome on Statalist. (Notwithstanding that, you are expected to read
> >> the documentation here....)
> >>
> >> So, many, perhaps most, questions on the Stata language are _not_
> >> welcome on either  CV or SO. SO bills itself as for professional and
> >> enthusiast programmers, and programming really does mean what it says,
> >> not working out command syntax.
> >>
> >> 2. Much of what is valuable here falls some way -- indeed, in many
> >> cases, a long way -- outside the style or remit of SO or CV. Examples
> >> include
> >>
> >>     - announcements of new user-written commands
> >>     - suggestions for future Stata development
> >>     - new Stata version announcements
> >>     - how-to's on some topic
> >>     - job/consulting opportunities
> >>     - bug reports (unless somehow phrased as a question)
> >>
> >> Losing such material would be a major blow to Statalist.
> >>
> >> 3. Stas plays much attention to what activity or activities would
> >> promote the public
> >> reputation of Stata outside the user community. However, I doubt that
> >> migrating lots of questions to SO or CV is unlikely to have quite the
> >> effect Stas desires. I am dimly aware of lots of questions on R on SO;
> >> evidently R is used heavily, especially in universities, and many of its
> >> users struggle with it; so what else is new? I don't think people whose
> >> opinions you would most value count users any more than they would
> >> assess newspapers by mass circulation. In fact, the existence of a
> >> self-contained good quality forum with high activity is quite possibly
> >> more likely to maintain and improve the reputation of Stata, not least
> >> by promoting some sense of community.  I am not worried that the
> >> community becomes too inward-looking; what I see is overwhelmingly
> >> people using Stata and then using the results in their papers and
> >> presentations to groups outside.
> >>
> >> 4. Broadly I would describe SO and CV as considerably more complicated
> >> than the new Statalist forum. I don't attribute as much importance to
> >> mechanisms such as voting, reputation and badges as Stas does. For
> >> example, I just counted up that I have been awarded 101 badges across
> >> SO and CV, but that doesn't amount for more than the arcana of the
> >> games played by my 10-year-old nephew. It strikes me that people find
> >> it easy to judge reputation just by watching Statalist briefly without
> >> anyone needing to measure it.
> >>
> >> Above all, no one is (I hope) insisting that there is one best forum for
> >> all. For example, no one has mentioned www.talkstats.com in this thread,
> >> but it's evidently congenial to many Stata users, and www.stata-forum.de
> >> offers German language support. In each case, highly competent and
> >> experienced users handle much of the traffic. What's puzzling is that
> >> despite their very much greater sophistication -- until just now --
> >> neither SO nor CV has achieved lift-off compared with Statalist in terms
> >> of frequent Stata questions. Some people evidently prefer(red)
> >> email-based questions, but I think a major factor was people asking
> >> questions wherever experts appeared concentrated.
> >>
> >> Nick
> >> njcoxstata@gmail.com
> >>
> >>
> >> On 7 April 2014 15:34, Stas Kolenikov <skolenik@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Dear Stataliasters,
> >>>
> >>> thanks again to Marcello Pagano, Stata Corp side team and everybody
> >>> involved in setting up statalist.org. I however would like play a
> >>> devil's advocate and argue that we DO NOT NEED statalist in that form.
> >>> I would instead argue that we need to find ways to move the statalist
> >>> discussion to the StackExchange system (http://www.stackexchange.com).
> >>>
> >>> Let me describe the system in bold strokes. (Disclaimer: I am closely
> >>> familiar only with the statistics website on StackExchange family,
> >>> http://stats.stackexchange.com, although I keep an eye on another five
> >>> or so sites, such as latex, math, biking, and board games, out of 100+
> >>> for all walks of life). On each of the sites, users ask questions and
> >>> seek inputs from other participants. Other users can answer these
> >>> questions. (So far, that's trivial, and every forum does that. The
> >>> crucial differences begin at this point.) The quality of different
> >>> answers can be compared by upvotes or downvotes that registered users
> >>> can cast. Answers can be improved by editing. In fact, questions can
> >>> be edited, as well (so at the very least, one could edit a novice's
> >>> question to incorporate the code formatting and tag the topic(s) that
> >>> the question raise(s)... and NJC can edit Stas Kolenikov's questions
> >>> for silly grammar :) ). Besides full answers, users can also provide
> >>> smaller-scale comments. Duplicate questions are being identified,
> >>> flagged, and closed, with links to what they are duplicating. A user's
> >>> contribution to the site is measured by their "reputation" that is
> >>> accumulated through good questions and answers, and by badges (asking
> >>> questions roles, answering question roles, editing roles, flagging
> >>> roles, etc.). Thus there is a variety of feedback mechanisms that help
> >>> improving the quality of questions and answers, and motivate the users
> >>> to participate. Thematic sites provide special formatting and/or
> >>> syntax highlighting, like Latex-type MathJAX formatting on math or
> >>> statistics sites (implemented on statalist.org, as well); code
> >>> formatting on programming and statistics sites (partially implemented
> >>> on statalist.org, requires some cleanup, as far as I understand; on
> >>> stats.stackexchange.com, R code is provided with simple syntax
> >>> highlighting, too); chess board rendering on the chess site; card
> >>> rendering on the poker website; etc. There's a sophisticated system of
> >>> tags that have mini-wikies (available on mouse-over) and full wikies
> >>> (available on clicks); users accumulate their reputation both overall
> >>> and within tags. Moderators play a major role in keeping the site
> >>> running, as it is the moderators who take actions on low quality
> >>> questions and answers (close duplicates, migrate questions to more
> >>> appropriate sites, etc.)
> >>>
> >>> The biggest difference between a typical forum format (including
> >>> statalist) and StackExchange is the conceptual vision of the mission
> >>> they have in mind. Historically, plain-email-text statalist has been
> >>> aimed at "User 1 posts their current problem" - "User 2 posts a
> >>> solution to that specific problem" - "User 3 refines, if there's room"
> >>> - and everybody forgets about the whole thing a month later (although
> >>> in the case of statalist, we often see referrals to statalist
> >>> archives). StackExchange works on generating knowledge about the
> >>> universe (in this case, this would be Stata universe) that is supposed
> >>> to stay for prosperity, so that website users and the Internet at
> >>> large could benefit from the previously generated answers. The
> >>> ultimate goal is that StackExchange posts show up on the first page of
> >>> Google when you search something like "fixed effects model with
> >>> heteroskedastic panels". In some of my Google queries, I do indeed get
> >>> SE posts, so somehow the mechanism of StackExchange I described above
> >>> does work.
> >>>
> >>> I am not quite sure how to better describe my next point, but I think
> >>> that creating statalist.org compartmentalizes Stata as an obscure
> >>> software. While those in the academic ivory towers can enjoy their
> >>> academic freedom, others in industry and government have to fight this
> >>> impression at their workplaces ("How is it called again? Why are you
> >>> not happy with some alternative software that we have a license
> >>> for?"). This is a tiring uphill battle. (Literally today, I had to
> >>> convert some SAS code to Stata and back, and StackOverflow, the
> >>> programming branch of StackExchange, offered some good pointers...
> >>> which I got from the first Google search page!) The statistics branch
> >>> of StackExchange, CrossValidated (http://stats.stackexchange.com), is
> >>> heavily entrenched in R, and the popular claims regarding popularity
> >>> of R are based on the counts of posts on StackExchange
> >>> (http://r4stats.com/articles/popularity/). Moving to stackexchange.com
> >>> rather than to statalist.org would help strengthening the argument
> >>> that Stata is a proper, kosher, mainstream statistical package. A
> >>> fivefold or tenfold increase in the volume of Stata questions that
> >>> could happen once hsphsun2 closes would make a good splash in Stata
> >>> reputation in the big world outside statalist walls.
> >>>
> >>> Toning this down a little bit, I think the best of two worlds can be
> >>> combined on statalist.org if the major components of the StackExchange
> >>> system are utilized. The unique features that Stata Corp can donate to
> >>> the system to make it superior over the limitations of the format and
> >>> capabilities of StackExchange would be syntax highlighting similar to
> >>> that of the Do-Editor, and automatic links to the online help files
> >>> (http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?whatever) that are added once a Stata
> >>> command is being identified in the code section. A more prominent use
> >>> of tags is a must for the forum to be usable as a reference, rather
> >>> than a hit-and-run (ask-and-wait) system that it has historically
> >>> been. Stata commands may act as tags (based on either what user enters
> >>> as a special tag if that's something user-contributed, like -outreg-
> >>> or -ivreg2-, or what is being recognized automatically, which I
> >>> suggested above). Users should be required to use tags, or at least
> >>> asked to confirm when they are submitting a question with no tags. (7
> >>> tags on 78 "General" forum questions, and two more from "Using the
> >>> forum"??? I'd say it is not working yet.) For tags to work well,
> >>> though, other users should be able to edit tags in the original posts.
> >>> Adding any of that functionality would require serious work on the
> >>> forum engine. How much the engine can be expanded, I have no idea; I
> >>> am not a website programmer. If this equates to just reproducing
> >>> StackExchange engine, it is obviously a futile exercise.
> >>>
> >>> Joining StackExchange system as a separate site may or may not work
> >>> out (see http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq -- there should be a
> >>> critical mass of users, questions and topics, and so far, I am aware
> >>> of about five or so statalist people who are active on CrossValidated,
> >>> which won't create a critical mass). R questions are split between the
> >>> statistics website and the programming website, depending on whether
> >>> it is more of "why doesn't lmer produce a standard error for variance
> >>> components" (statistics) or "how do I tweak ggplot2 to produce
> >>> transparent graphs" (programming). I imagine Stata questions could
> >>> work pretty much the same way, too. At the moment, there is about 1
> >>> question a day on Stata on statistics website, and may be two
> >>> questions a day on programming website... compared to 10+ new
> >>> questions on statalist... on a slow day.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -- Stas Kolenikov, PhD, PStat (ASA, SSC)
> >>> -- Principal Survey Scientist, Abt SRBI
> >>> -- Opinions stated in this email are mine only, and do not reflect the
> >>> position of my employer
> >>> -- http://stas.kolenikov.name
> >>> *
> >>> *   For searches and help try:
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> >>> *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
> >>> *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
> >>
> >> *
> >> *   For searches and help try:
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> >> *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
> >> *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
> >
> >
> > *
> > *   For searches and help try:
> > *   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> > *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
> > *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
> *
> *   For searches and help try:
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> *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
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