rspatial github organization repo

[tim-salabim]

Dear all, given that we need a repository for a new package for interactive feature editing and maybe other general packages in the future, I wonder if it would be a good idea to set up a "rspatial" organization github repository?

We could, as a first step, move this repo to the .io pages there and then start collaborative package development around the spatial universe from there. rOpenSci seems to be an extremely successful model for collaborative open source development. Something similar could also work for focused spatial package development.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Tim

[sckott]

the web services task view changed via @leeper https://github.com/ropensci/webservices/blob/master/Makefile - i think they now start with md, and make ctv from that

[pat-s]

Happy to join the discussion! After quickly browsing all repos and issues, here are some first thoughts:

• Whats the difference between rspatial-spark and the discuss repo? Both are there for discussion and its unclear to me why there are 2 discussion repos

• When using Github for discussion, issues with a lot of comments become very long (endless scrolling). Is there an option to page it or somehow organise it? (I know, Github isn´t indented to be a forum..)

• In issues with a lot of comments, I think there is a need of a sticky-like post at the beginning of the issue which summarises the current discussion status - otherwise new users will need hours to get all information together. There´s already lots of information gathered here but it needs to be organised/summarised somehow. Otherwise comments will just stay comments. And yeah, this would need moderation + time..

[dankelley]

@pat-s As to your second and third points, you are quite right. The utility of GH issues for discussion is limited greatly by the lack of threading (or comment hierarchies, if that might be a clearer term). If there were no competition for a discussion interface, this wouldn't be as frustrating as it is. But there is a lot of competition; I imagine everyone reading this has spent time today reading other discussion forums in which threading makes it quite easy to grasp the main point quickly.

My impression (after having complained to GH about this numerous times over the years) is that things are not going to change. In my own projects, of which perhaps https://github.com/dankelley/oce/issues is germaine to the spatial project (since it provides ways to process and plot spatial geophysical data) I have come to the conclusion that the GH issues can be made a bit more useful if participants establish a convention that titles be narrowly focussed, and that tangents in the discussion are broken out into new issues. To some extent, the "labels" scheme can help a bit with this sort of thing, but not much, really.

My guess is that the wiki part of GH is going to be more helpful than the issue part, for discussion threads such as the one I just entered.

--D.

[pat-s]

@dankelley Good summary!

I see the point using Github

• most of the R-spatial people have an account and are active here
• Possible hosting of different R-packages under the hat of an organisation
• Syntax highlighting when talking about code

However it is not intended to be a forum (sadly) and if used as such, one needs to put in lots of moderation to keep it tidy and clear. Probably worth an extra issue..