[R] mailing list for basic questions - proposal

[Martin Wegmann]

Dear R-user, 

there have been already a lot of discussion with some good points against such 
a list and the opposite opinions as well. 

Well, I would like to propose that we start a testing phase either with

- only "internal" membership, that means only people from this dept. + perhaps 
some other german universities can subscribe to list list and in 3 month 
time, there will an evaluation and summary how this list behaved.

- or an open "international" membership, where the language is english and 
everybody can subsribe and no approval is required.

In both cases the R-beginner mailing list can be shut down after this period 
of time if it proves to be inefficient, too much work or leads to a wrong 
understanding of R lists as a "customer service". 

I would reckon that for this testing phase it is not important to setup a 
searchable archive or put lots of work into it but to monitor which kind of 
questions are asked, into which direction it leads, if it encouraged people 
to ask "do it for me" questions and so on. 

I would do it and would appreciate if some native-english speaker could join. 

I hope that this proposal is acceptable for everybody.

thanks a lot for the discussion, it changed my view of a beginner mailing list 
considerably, now I see the problems behind it. 

best regards, Martin


On Tuesday 16 December 2003 14:17, Martin Wegmann wrote:
> Dear R-user,
>
> I already received quite a lot of replies to this mail and like to do a
> preliminary sum up.
>
> A few were sceptical about the use of such a beginner mailing list.
> The arguments were that people starting with R will only stay subscribed
> for a short time
> until they reached the R-help "level" and therefore only beginner will
> teach beginner how to
> use R.
>
> But as far as I can judge, the majority of people who replied to this mail
> are medium to
> experienced user who like to help beginner but does not call themselves
> highly
> experienced user as the main "answerers" on the R-help mailing list.
>
> Therefore I assume that, even though some answers might be wrong, the
> threat of
> possibly wrong answers might be minimal, due to various experienced users
> who like to
> subsribe to this list.
>
> The majority of replies were positive about such a list and welcomed the
> idea to
> encourage new user by providing a basic R mailing list, like the already
> existent
> corresponding manuals in the contributed documentation at r-project.org.
>
> And again, this list shall only provide a basic and smooth introduction
> into R and its
> capabilities.
> Questions like; "How do I make my labels in a graphic bigger? - How do I
> change the
> colour? - etc." are welcome and surely would annoy the majority of R-help
> user because it
> is mentioned somewhere on the first 10 pages of every manual, but people
> who are used
> to click on a graphic and change it in a second would not be convinced that
> R can do
> great graphics.
>
> well, I would welcome if there would be more discussion about it or to give
> it a try
> (perhaps mention it on the r-project web-site) and look how productive this
> mailing list
> proves to be.
> The address of the R-beginner mailing list is:
>
> https://lists.uni-wuerzburg.de/mailman/listinfo/r-beginner
>
> best regards, Martin