[R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up

[Andrew C. Ward]

There are always people on lists whose email manner leaves
a great deal to be desired. I tend to think, however, that
it's a small price to pay for excellent, free software and
fast, expert advice. Anyway, there's no guarantee that a
beginner's list would be any more friendly than the main 
list, particularly if it is "staffed" by volunteers.

Regards,

Andrew C. Ward

CAPE Centre
Department of Chemical Engineering
The University of Queensland
Brisbane Qld 4072 Australia


Quoting Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at myway.com>:

> 
> 
> My personal view on this is that there is need for a
> friendly
> list with a more "customer service" attitude than
> r-help.
> 
> r-help is really very useful but its also intimidating
> and I bet lots of people have questions that they never
> ask
> for fear of the response.   Maybe some of them even
> decide
> not to learn R.
> 
> ---
> Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 00:49:15 +0100 
> From: Martin Wegmann <wegmann_mailinglist at gmx.net>
> To: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at pdf.com>,
> <rossini at u.washington.edu> 
> Cc: <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch> 
> Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions -
> preliminary sum up 
> 
>  
>  
> Hello, 
> 
> I agree completely that well thought out questions are
> important to receive 
> good and quick replies and I agree as well that the
> replies on the R-help 
> list are very good and helpful.
> But I had to learn and I am still learing how to write
> good questions and 
> appreciate Spencer's explanantion how a good question
> should look like in his 
> opinion. 
> 
> I am not sure how this new mailing list might evolve. 
> It might be that the R-beginner list takes some load of
> the R-help list by 
> reducing the amount of "basic" questions which won't be
> questioned anymore 
> here (what aren't many) and that new user might be taught
> to post "good" 
> question before they start posting to R-help.
> If it proves to be ineffective or might affect R-help in
> some unwanted manner 
> it would be an easy one to shut it down. 
> 
> I doubt that it will split the R-help list - in my
> opinion it is unlikely that 
> medium/experienced R user who will subscribe to
> R-beginner will unsubscribe 
> from the R-help list. 
> Moreover people starting with R are less likely to send
> any mails to this 
> list, some do and are refered in most cases to the
> manuals. 
> When I started R I looked through the archive and because
> I did not understand 
> even one question, I was intimidated by this list and did
> not send any mail 
> until a few weeks later (that was not because of the
> statistics but the 
> commands)
> For this kind of people the R-beginner list is thought -
> to encourage them to 
> send "stupid" questions during their first steps in R. 
> 
> They shall recognize questions they would have asked
> themselves.
> Therefore I think that the quality of the question is in
> this case less 
> important than it's level.
> 
> I hope I did not misunderstood some points ,-)
> 
> best regards Martin
> 
> 
> 
> On Tuesday 16 December 2003 17:20, Spencer Graves wrote:
> > I agree with Tony's observation that well thought out
> questions
> > are more likely to receive an answer than something
> that is long,
> > rambling, and poorly focused. Many questions take more
> time to read
> > than I have available, so I don't bother. I like
> questions that include
> > toy examples in a few lines of code that I can copy
> from an email into R
> > and test ideas. Careful formatting that looks pretty in
> an email is an
> > obstacle for me, because it increases the work required
> to get it into
> > R. Many questioners could answer their own problems in
> the process of
> > generating such a toy example. When they can't, that
> exercise helps
> > them focus the question, which makes it easier for
> potential respondents
> > to understand the problem and reply. Without that, I
> must either
> > generate a toy example myself (which I've done many
> times) or respond
> > with untested code and risk looking stupid when my
> untested suggestion
> > doesn't work.
> >
> > hope this helps.
> > spencer graves
> >
> > A.J. Rossini wrote:
> > >"Pascal A. Niklaus" <Pascal.Niklaus at unibas.ch>
> writes:
> > >>- In my experience even *very* basic questions
> *relating to the R
> > >>language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by
> how much time
> > >>some members of the R core team spend answering
> relatively basic
> > >>questions, and by how elaborate their answers
> generally are. So I
> > >>cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There
> are these
> > >>excellent mailing list archives, so why "fragment"
> this list?
> > >
> > >To follow up, well-thought through basic questions do
> get answered; in
> > >particular, they can be useful for those of us writing
> packages,
> > >documentation, etc.
> > >
> > >I have a sense that it is the quality of the question
> (details of what
> > >is intended to do, or not known, signs of using other
> sources of
> > >materials which folks have spent years on, no signs
> that this is a "do
> > >my work for me" question) rather than the level of the
> question, that
> > >is an issue.
> > >
> > >best,
> > >-tony
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> 
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