[R] Web forum - should I make one?: an opinion

[Patrick Connolly]

On Tue, 21-Sep-2010 at 12:55PM -0500, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:

[...]

|> Well, if You think the niche is filled, never mind, but I think R
|> should have an official web forum. It can be stackoverflow (then
|> I'd expect links from main R pages to it) or I (or someone else)
|> can create it. Still, I think it is good idea to create one... More
|> opinions?

Here's my opinion:

I detest web forums.  I find them an incredibly slow way to find
anything useful.  If a topic has more than 2 people who've made
comments, it's a research project itself to work out whose comment is
being commented on at what stage.  I'm not interested in becoming an
investigative journalist.  For years I've been puzzled why forums are
so popular when IMHO, a mailing list is infinitely simpler, faster and
more informative.

Then I realized that a huge difference is the fact that at least 90%
of internet users have probably never seen a good simple text based
email client that is capable of displaying posts in threads.  Therefor
they've never experienced what I can do so easily.  Were I constrained
to using something like Outlook to read mail, an infliction which many
people have, I wouldn't find it that useful.

One of the many advantages of what we use now is the fact that it's
easy for me to remove clutter by deleting threads of posts that I'm
not interested in following and saving those I wish to keep in
specific folders for future reference and searching.  The archives can
be searched if there's something I haven't saved.  Though they are not
as handy as having it on my own computer, it's still far better than
the forum interface.

|> 
|> > The R-* e-mail lists are the "official" venues and you can read/post via
|> > e-mail. There are also other means of interacting with the e-mail lists
|> > using Gmane and Nabble.
|> 
|> Mailman is very good tool, but not for everything. And IMHO many people are 
|> more used to search, ask and work on forums than on mailinglists.	

I've never had the experience of finding help that way which was
remotely as prompt or helpful as what the R-help list or other mailing
lists provide.  (For example, try finding anything on VSN's Forum page
to do with ASReml.)  But, sad to say, it probably *is* true that "many
people" are more used to doing things the difficult poke-and-hope way.
There are times when I feel as though I'm using electricity when "many
people" have never seen electricity and are using candles and water
wheels.

YMMV evidently.

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