[R] possible spam alert

[Kimpel, Mark William]

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. 

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

-- 
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.

   ___    Patrick Connolly   
 {~._.~}          		 Great minds discuss ideas    
 _( Y )_  	  	        Middle minds discuss events 
(:_~*~_:) 	       		 Small minds discuss people  
 (_)-(_)  	                           ..... Anon
	  
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.