[BioC] no BioConductor posting guide

[Adaikalavan Ramasamy]

See comments below.

On Fri, 2005-04-08 at 14:15 +0100, Jan T. Kim wrote:
> Hi Adai,
<SNIP>
> But is there such a problem in BioC? Personally, I'm quite a happy
> BioC subscriber and don't see any need to try and control the amount
> of thoughtless postings here.

As you mention below, this is an inter-disciplinary field and thus
sometimes I find excellent questions posted here do not attract
sufficient responses because they are poorly written.

But maybe this is a case of "R has one, so why not BioConductor" envy ?

> It is very important to consider the fact that BioC is an
> interdisciplinary audience much more than r-help. If bioscientists
> (with a spotty statistics background) perceive BioC as a bunch of
> arrogant know-it-alls, this is detrimental to interdisciplinary
> communication at the core of BioC's subject area.

This is an important point.

> Therefore, if a BioC posting guide is written, I strongly recommend to
> take great care to avoid any suspicion of arrogance and unwillingness
> to entertain the sometimes difficult / boring / seemingly unknowledgeable
> processes of interdisciplinary communication. As a biologist who has
> moved into computational biology, I've seen a few times how easy it is
> to be perceived as arrogant, and how difficult it is to convince people
> otherwise once they got this impression.

Again an excellent point. I have taken this into consideration and have
hopefully incorporated into the posting guide. I look forward towards
your comments and ideas.

> It seems to me that the best way to avoid this risk is to not have a
> posting guide, at least not one in the r-help style -- unless there are

Yes, I have taken some of the more important points from R-help posting
and rearranged it to be more "friendly".

> strong reasons in favour of that. But if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

True. But it seems that a few people have expressed a desire for a
posting guide. So if not me, then someone else will fix it. 

> Best regards, Jan