[Rd] No RTFM?

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 6:47 PM, Paul Johnson <pauljohn32 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Hadley Wickham <hadley at rice.edu> wrote:
>>> previous suggestion by a regular contributor.  I still think a better
>>> response is not to escalate:  Either ignore the post or say something like,
>>> "I don't understand your question.  Please provide a self-contained minimal
>>> example as suggested in the Posting Guide ... ."
>>
>> I agree wholeheartedly. I have tried to do this with the ggplot2
>> mailing list, and I think it has been extremely successful in
>> fostering a community that is friendly and polite, yet still provides
>> excellent technical support (and these days, most of it doesn't come
>> from me!).
>>
>
> I've been insulted in r-help and its no fun.  After Gabor pointed out
> the logic in it,  I have to admit he is right. It does keep traffic
> down.  I don't go there anymore unless I'm completely desperate.
>
> I agree also, sometimes RTFM is the right answer, especially if it is
> stated as "That is discussed on p. 162 of the R Guide for Whatever..."
>  I don't think people are insulted if  you tell them to check
> something specific.
>
> Usually, first time visitors don't know about the R posting guide and
> when they ask an incomplete question, we should just refer them to it.
>  We don't need the angry tone that we often see, but I don't think
> people mind being referred. This presupposes the posting guide is
> helpful. If somebody forgets the posting guide twice, then I think we
> should all berate and insult them. I mean vigorously :)
>
> My personal opinion is that the R posting guide could be revised to be
> more direct.  Exhausted, frustrated people don't benefit as much as
> they could because the document is too long.

Regarding length, the portion at the end of every r-help message (but
this does not appear at the end of r-devel messages or the messages
of other lists concerning R):

   "provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code."

It was intended to provide a one line synopsis of the key part of the posting
guide that could be readily pointed to.  Although we have to be careful about
making that too verbose, as well, it might not be too onerous to add
one more line
such as:

   "and use ?, RSiteSeach("my term") and http://rseek.org before posting"