[R] draft of posting guide

[Peter Flom]

How about some sort of happy medium?

e.g., in the posting guide include something like

'The people who wrote R, and the people who answers questions on
R-help, are volunteers.  R software is the product of thousands of hours
of time by many highly trained and highly intelligent people.  Please
respect their time by following the guidelines below; note that failure
to follow these guidelines may result in your question being ignored, or
in responses that are less detailed than you would like." 


At the same time (and I don't think this necessarily needs to be posted
in any guide), I think that there's no call for rudeness or snippiness
on the part of people who answer questions.  Very few of the people who
post to this list are stupid; many people new to R find the learning
curve rather steep.  While this doesn't excuse rudeness or arrogance on
the part of the people who ASK questions, it also doesn't excuse
rudeness or arrogance on the part of those who answer them.  

Who knows? SOME of the people who ask an ignorant question today may
ask an intelligent one tomorrow.  SOME of these questions MAY help
others on the list, or even (dare I say it?) help the people who develop
the code.  It MIGHT even happen that someone who asks such a question
today helps write something really useful at some point in the future. 
But none of this will happen if the person stops using R.



Peter

Peter L. Flom, PhD
Assistant Director, Statistics and Data Analysis Core
Center for Drug Use and HIV Research
National Development and Research Institutes
71 W. 23rd St
www.peterflom.com
New York, NY 10010
(212) 845-4485 (voice)
(917) 438-0894 (fax)