[R] Course and book announcements on r-help

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> John Kane <jrkrideau at inbox.com>
>>>>>     on Fri, 13 Mar 2015 06:16:19 -0800 writes:

    > I have the feeling that this was discussed 3-4 years ago
    > and the overall opinion seems to be that if the course or
    > book was relevant then it was acceptable on an occasional
    > basis. No spamming-type or mass selling posts were.  
    > John Kane Kingston ON Canada

Your feeling is pretty good.
At the time -- and still today -- we did not want to impose
rigid rules about this.
As host and principal maintainer of the R-*@r-project.org
mailing list, my current view is as follows:

* Books: 

  Should typically *not* be announced on R-help for the
  following reasons.

  a) The R web page lists books which deal with R as a major theme.
    (http://www.r-project.org/ sidebar 'Documentation' -> 'Books'
       ==> http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-books.html). All R
    Core and some other R Foundation members can edit the
    underlying *.bib source file in R-docs; historically 95% of
    that work has been done by Kurt Hornik and Fritz Leisch.
  b) Books just using R to solve a certain problem abound nowadays
    and should defintely *not* be announced as globally as by
    using R-help.

* Course announcements: 

  You may announce a course "series" once if it's new *and*
  globally accessible online.  All other courses should be
  announced in local R user groups, or similar forums. 

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

And because it's the weekend: 

Motto:

  We humans live much better with guidelines by responsibly applying good judgement.   
  It's only the (digital) machines that need strict unambigous rules.
  Let the AI programmers deal with them and remain human ourselves!

   (inspired by Haim Harari's thoughts in http://edge.org/response-detail/26056)


Best regards,
Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich and R Core


    >> -----Original Message----- From:
    >> wolfgang.viechtbauer at maastrichtuniversity.nl Sent: Fri,
    >> 13 Mar 2015 10:26:04 +0100 To: r-help at r-project.org
    >> Subject: [R] Course and book announcements on r-help
    >> 
    >> Dear All,
    >> 
    >> Just wondering: Is there any official policy on
    >> announcing R-related courses and books on r-help?
    >> 
    >> I didn't find anything on this in the posting guide, but
    >> http://www.r-project.org/mail.html#instructions says that
    >> r-help is, among other things, for "announcements (not
    >> covered by 'R-announce' or 'R-packages', see
    >> above)". That sounds a bit like this would cover courses
    >> and books, but I am not sure. Obviously, R-announce is
    >> not meant for that, as it is "for major announcements
    >> about the development of R and the availability of new
    >> code" and is to be used "for announcements mainly by the
    >> R Core Development Team".
    >> 
    >> I see the occasional course/book announcement, but it
    >> seems to me that there are a lot more courses and books
    >> out there compared to how many announcements there are
    >> related to them on this mailing list. So, I am wondering
    >> if such announcements are somewhat implicitly
    >> discouraged.
    >> 
    >> Best, Wolfgang
    >> 
    >> --
    >> Wolfgang Viechtbauer, Ph.D., Statistician Department of
    >> Psychiatry and Psychology School for Mental Health and
    >> Neuroscience Faculty of Health, Medicine, and Life
    >> Sciences Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616 (VIJV1) 6200
    >> MD Maastricht, The Netherlands +31 (43) 388-4170 |
    >> http://www.wvbauer.com