[R] possible spam alert

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 1/31/2007 5:38 PM, Kimpel, Mark William wrote:
> The last two times I have originated message threads on R or
> Bioconductor I have received the message included below from someone
> named Patrick Connolly. Both times I was the originator of the message
> thread and used what I thought was a unique subject line that explained
> as best I could what my question was. Patrick seems to be implying that
> I am abusing the R and BioC help newsgroups in this fashion. 

Your last message (subject "[R] regexpr and parsing question") shows up 
in my reader as a reply to a message by Gabor Grothendieck with subject 
"Re: [R] change plotting symbol for groups in trellis graph", because it 
has this line in the header:

In-Reply-To: <971536df0701301355j77b8d05oabce276b61fa2bf7 at mail.gmail.com>

and his message had this in the header:

Message-ID: <971536df0701301355j77b8d05oabce276b61fa2bf7 at mail.gmail.com>

That's what Patrick was complaining about.  You probably found Gabor's 
message in the group, hit "Reply", and then edited the subject line to 
make it unique.  Your mailer remembered that it was a reply to Gabor's 
message, and told everyone that, even though it wasn't really.

Instead, if you want to write to R-help, just start a new message, and 
send it to r-help at r-project.org (or r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch).

Duncan Murdoch


> 
> When I emailed him to give me a specific example, he did not reply. The
> most recent thread that he seems concerned about was to the R list and
> was entitled "regexpr and parsing question" . I believe the previous
> post of mine that he had problems with was to the BioC list but I can't
> remember its subject.
> 
> Is this spam?
> 
> If I am doing this correctly, you should see the subject "possible spam
> alert" in the subject header of THIS message.
> 
> Would the moderators of the lists please check and see if I am doing
> some wrong and, if not, inform Mr. Connolly that I am not. If others
> have received this message in error, it is possible it is spam and users
> should be alerted.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mark
> 
> Mark W. Kimpel MD 
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Official Business Address:
> 
>  
> 
> Department of Psychiatry
> 
> Indiana University School of Medicine
> 
> PR M116
> 
> Institute of Psychiatric Research
> 
> 791 Union Drive
> 
> Indianapolis, IN 46202
> 
>  
> This is a request to anyone who starts a new subject to begin with a new
> message and NOT reply to an existing one.  If your mail client is any
> good, it's very simple to set up an alias (mine is simply 'r') so that
> the tedious task of typing 'r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch' is unnecessary and
> it's quicker than scrolling through an address book.
> It's also quicker than deleting the previous subject.
> 
> Most mornings, I have over a screenful of messages mostly from R-help
> and it's very useful to have them threaded.  However, the usefulness of
> threading is lost when posters reply to a message and then change the
> subject instead of creating a new message.
> 
> People who don't have a mail client that can display email in threads
> are probably unaware that this sort of thing can happen in ones that do:
> 
> 
>     37 N   25 Jan Luis Silva              ( 34) [R] plot/screen
>     38 N   25 Jan Uwe Ligges              ( 55) `-> 
>     39 N   25 Jan Fernando Henrique Ferra ( 20) [R] Plotting coloured
> histograms
> ->  40 N   26 Jan Mohamed A. Kerasha      ( 12) |->[R] Distributions.
>     41 N   26 Jan ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk   ( 26) | |->
>     42     26 Jan Qin Xin                 (  9) | `->[R] how could I add
> legends
>     43     27 Jan Ko-Kang Kevin Wang      ( 31) |   `->
>     44 N   26 Jan Remigijus Lapinskas     ( 32) |->Re: [R] Plotting
> coloured his
>     45 N   26 Jan Damon Wischik           (125) `-> 
>     46 N   25 Jan Rex_Bryan at urscorp.com   ( 10) [R] plotting primatives,
> ellipse
>     47 N   25 Jan Uwe Ligges              ( 19) `->   
> 
> 
> As Martin Maechler explained some time ago, it also screws up the
> archives for a similar reason.
> 
> Your cooperation will be greatly appreciated.
> 
> best
>