Metadata quickstart

[colinbrislawn]

Improvement Description
The metadata tutorial is very detailed and comprehensive. But it's very dense for first time users.

I would love to see some sort of ‘two minute metadata’ that leads with good examples. Qiime 1 did a pretty good job with this, showing

#SampleID BarcodeSequence LinkerPrimerSequence Description

then moving on to

#SampleID BarcodeSequence LinkerPrimerSequence Treatment DOB Description
PC.354 AGCACGAGCCTA YATGCTGCCTCCCGTAGGAGT Control 20061218 Control_mouse__I.D._354
PC.355 AACTCGTCGATG YATGCTGCCTCCCGTAGGAGT Control 20061218 Control_mouse__I.D._355

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But we can do better by copying the Tidyverse. Their best documentation leads with short examples that get right into the action:

starwars %>% 
  filter(species == "Droid")
#> # A tibble: 5 x 13
#>   name  height  mass hair_color skin_color  eye_color birth_year gender
#>   <chr>  <int> <dbl> <chr>      <chr>       <chr>          <dbl> <chr> 
#> 1 C-3PO    167    75 <NA>       gold        yellow           112 <NA>  
#> 2 R2-D2     96    32 <NA>       white, blue red               33 <NA>  
#> 3 R5-D4     97    32 <NA>       white, red  red               NA <NA>  
#> 4 IG-88    200   140 none       metal       red               15 none  
#> 5 BB8       NA    NA none       none        black             NA none  
#> # ... with 5 more variables: homeworld <chr>, species <chr>, films <list>,
#> #   vehicles <list>, starships <list>

Then they build on this, showing more complex interactions:

starwars %>% 
  mutate(name, bmi = mass / ((height / 100)  ^ 2)) %>%
  select(name:mass, bmi)
#> # A tibble: 87 x 4
#>   name           height  mass   bmi
#>   <chr>           <int> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 Luke Skywalker    172    77  26.0
#> 2 C-3PO             167    75  26.9
#> 3 R2-D2              96    32  34.7

Proposed Behavior
'Show don't tell' encourages users to build a mental model of how the software works.

Let's show users what the minimum metadata looks like and how to check this with Keemei.

References

1. form x-ref
2. metadata tutorial
3. best documentation