Reasons not to answer very basic questions in a straightforward way; was: Re: [R] creating a sequence of object names

[John]

Dear Uwe,

I must say that I had thanked you for referring me to
the "specific and exact" FAQ 7.21 and I had solved my
simple problem from it. I alreadly had looked at some
of basic materials like 'An Introduction to R', 'R for
Beginners', 'R Data Import/Export as well as the
FAQ(that is, I know how to use ?assign and ?get). But,
because I am not going to be an expert in R I assume
that I have missed something (even very trivial) in
those documents. Of course, I can read them again and
again until I know everything in them. That is for
more interested enthusiasts, however. 

I know very well that it is basic manners to read
those materials before asking questions here, but you
should also understand that people sometimes get stuck
with very simple problems if they are driven by stress
or run down. They can save a lot of time and
concentrate on and develop their primary jobs instead.
And I don't think you should be worried about 900
silly questions out of 1000 messages posted because
they are at least well-educated people who know what
reading basic materials before posting questions
means.

People can learn diverse solutions about their simple
questions, from advanced experienced users, that
sometimes contain much more informations and tips.
It is up to users(not necessarily advanced users)
whether or not they are willing to answer questions
and share their precious (even little) findings in
programming. Volunteers can simply ignore silly
questions if they are not appropriate for answering.
Or I would let them know what to do with their
improper questions in a personal email.

Finally, I do appreciate your answer again and other
people's active replies too. It was really useful to
point me to the specific FAQ rather than to just say
'look at the FAQ'. It simply occurred to my mind that
"kindness" is the best policy for good education.

I beg your pardon if this message is not relevant to
this help list.

With kind regards,

John


 --- Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
wrote: 
> John wrote:
> > Thank you, Uwe. I've found a way to do the job by
> > reading the FAQ 7.21 although it is not giving a
> > precise explanation to a novice or casual user at
> > first reading. For example, if you type the first
> two
> 
> But the corresponding help files do so, for sure,
> and the FAQ 7.21 
> points you to ?assign and ?get.
> 
> 
> > lines in the FAQ, you get an error as you do not
> have
> > the variable, a, initially.
> >
> > I am sure that more and more people get interested
> in
> > and serious about using R if advanced users are
> kind
> > enough to answer simple and silly questions as
> well
> > which are already explained in basic
> documentations.
> > Or is this community for highly motivated and
> advanced
> > R users only?
> 
> No, of course it is for novices as well!
> 
> BUT we do expect that novices do read basic
> documentation such as "An 
> Introduction to R" and the R FAQ before asking
> question.
> If there are too many silly questions from thousands
> of R users, nobody 
> is able to manage the questions any more. And note
> that those people 
> answering questions do it on a voluntary basis, and
> (at least partially) 
> in their spare time!
> Nobody would be subscribed to R-help any more, if
> there are 1000 mails a 
> day, 900 of them containing silly questions! It is
> yet already hard 
> enough to get through the huge amount of messages in
> a reasonable amount 
> of time!
> 
> 
> I have answered your question in a way,
> 
>   1) so that it is up to you to read some
> documentation. Now you have 
> seen the FAQs and some help files. And you have
> learned much more than 
> you would have learned if I had said "Use assign()"
> 
>   2) so that nobody feels too encouraged to ask
> questions before reading 
> basic documentation - and my answer still saved you
> a lot of time!
> 
> Uwe Ligges
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > John
> > 
> > 
> >  --- Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
> > wrote: 
> > 
> >>John wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Hello R-users,
> >>>
> >>>I wanted to generate objects named 'my.ftn1',
> >>>'my.ftn2', ... , 'my.ftn10', and tried the
> >>
> >>following
> >>
> >>>code without success. How can I do this?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>for ( i in 1:10 ) {
> >>>
> >>>+ sub(" ", "", paste("my.ftn", i)) <- NULL
> >>>+ }
> >>>Error: Target of assignment expands to
> >>
> >>non-language
> >>
> >>>object
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Many thanks.
> >>>
> >>>John
> >>>
> >>>______________________________________________
> >>>R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> >>>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >>>PLEASE do read the posting guide!
> >>
> >>http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >>
> >>
> >>Please do as suggested above, read the posting
> >>guide!
> >>It suggests to read the FAQs. FAQ 7.21 is what you
> >>are looking for: "How 
> >>can I turn a string into a variable?".
> >>
> >>Uwe Ligges
> >>
> > 
> > 
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide!
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> 
>