[R] a matter of etiquette

[Gabor Grothendieck]

You could send a reminder to the author.  Its happened to me that
nothing occurred and 6 months later I sent another email and that
seemed enough to get it fixed.

You could also ask the maintainer if the package has been abandoned
and offer to take over as maintainer.

If you just want to record the problems and offer some advice to
others on a workaround you could add a page to the the R wiki:
http://rwiki.r-project.org .   That way if its fixed you can later
modify the page to remove the note or remove the entire page.


2010/5/11 Adelchi Azzalini <azzalini at stat.unipd.it>:
> Dear useRs and expeRts,
>
> I would like to ask your views on an issue for which there possibly
> exists an established policy of the R-help list, but I am not aware
> of it.
>
> In 2008, I have spotted some errors in a package, one which is likely
> to have many users (I am not one myself). The more serious errors are
> in the documentation, since they lead to a completely distorted
> interpretation of the outcome; in addition, there is (at least) one
> programming error which produces some wrong computations. A few weeks
> later, the maintainers of the package replied, with a promise to handle
> these issues.
>
> Today, I have looked at that package again, and everthing is as in 2008,
> as for the points raised then. There has been at least one update of
> that package, about one year after our e-mail exchange.
>
> When I discover a bug in a program of a colleague, I point out it by a
> private communication to the author. If the problem is of some
> relevance, I expect that the bug is fixed in a reasonable time. In the
> present case, this fix has not been provided after over 18 months, and
> potentially users keep producing nonsense out of that package.
>
> What is the appropriate way to proceed now? Announce these errors to
> the whole R-help list, or what else?  I only rule out writing (again) to
> the maintainers of the package.
>
> Adelchi Azzalini
>
> --
> Adelchi Azzalini  <azzalini at stat.unipd.it>
> Dipart.Scienze Statistiche, Università di Padova, Italia
> tel. +39 049 8274147,  http://azzalini.stat.unipd.it/
>
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