[R] draft of posting guide. Sorry.

[A.J. Rossini]

A few comments...

Eryk Wolski <wolski at molgen.mpg.de> writes:

> As I said, the guide had given me the feeling that someone wants to censor
> me. Especially the first section of the Posting Guide: "How to ask good
> questions that prompt useful answers" does this. The guide starts with
> talking mainly about what you should not, or what you must not do. Some
> examples come quite late and after the "you must not cross fences, you
> must not..." introduction, I simply stopped to read. To much regulation
> kills spontaneity. Lack of spontaneity kills creativity, It cant be!, is
> what I thought. Now I had read the reminder of the Posting guide.

There is no real regulation with the guide.  It's a guide, and you are
free to use it (hopefully to your advantage) or ignore it (hopefully,
not to your disadvantage).  But you never know.  It's sort of like
Russian Roulette.  I can guide you against it, but you still might
play... 

> What I am missing are a short introduction answering such questions: What
> are the intention of this guide? What are the problems it is going to
> address?

Ideally, it provides a way to think through solutions to problems that
are "obvious", leaving the mailing list to those which are
"interesting".

All words in quotes are contextually defined, of course.

> I think that some hints to people that answer would not harm!
> The cases that someone does not get an answer are seldom. Often there are
> tens of answers to question. I have the impression that there are a
> COMPETITION for the best solution. I think that most of the beginners can
> live with a working solution, even if it is not the best one. If I ask a
> question than its because I want to get my work done and not to test the
> mailing list participants.This may make the workload smaller and may
> encourage less experienced R user to try to give answers.
> Not to take a questions as an EXAMINATION situation can make it also less
> aching or painfull if the question are not as precise as "wished". By
> changing this attitude of examiner,student, many of the points
> in this guide will be superfluous!

Some solutions are good, others are bad.  Solutions which exist in the
documentation are generally good -- it is rare (in my experience,
probably 8 years of using R) that they are wrong.

> Why the guide does NOT mention in one word that posting questions on the
> mailing list has also some DISADVANTAGES? e.g. Answers written in haste,
> bad temper (see my answer, sorry again), or answers two days later.  (And
> if  you know the right place too look you will get the answer
> immediately.)

Answers might not even be correct.  That is the argument against
moving from this list to another, unless the people that really know
the answer move as well.

> I even do not think the mailing list should be the last place where you
> are allowed to look for help. Simple trying to formulate the question to
> post it on the list can be helpfull. Why to make it so difficult to
> someone to try it?

You can.  However, spending 5-10 minutes with the documentation
sources will sometimes (not always) solve the problem.  Sometimes. 

> I personally find it very good if the same thing is asked ten different
> times in 3 different ways. This increases the probability that I will find
> a answer to my problem searching the mailing list.
> Its also true that many questions can be answered with a short "?command".
> But this does not make it superfluous.

It does, actually.  "help.search()" is your friend.  Read Eric's guide
to asking questions again.  Initial stupid questions make it hard to
fix your reputation.  People have overcome reputations for initial
stupidity, but it is sometimes much easier just to not be stupid in
the first place.  Most of the people that understand R can be
classified as "hackers", using Eric's jargon.   Note that I would
never claim to be one of them.

I realize that figuring out whether the question is stupid can be
tough for a beginner. However, the amount (and quality) of
(freely-available, at least for the cost of download, which might not
be free) documentation for R is simply incredible.  The closest that
I've seen, for freely available languages, is Python, for actual
quality of documentation.  And with R, most of the functions have
examples; plus, actual source code is usually easier to come by.

Sure, not everyone is a code hound.  But it's a great skill to pick
up, since the answers are all there.

best,
-tony

-- 
rossini at u.washington.edu            http://www.analytics.washington.edu/ 
Biomedical and Health Informatics   University of Washington
Biostatistics, SCHARP/HVTN          Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
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