I do share Eryk Wolski's and Pascal Nicklaus' concerns that my revision of 
the posting guide is somewhat unfriendly and negative.  My problem here was 
to keep it to a reasonable length, which meant eliminating sentences whose 
function was mainly to be positive and friendly.  Pascal put it nicely:

>- People tending not to dare to ask questions because they are intimidated by
>some aspects of the list (and after the r-beginner discussion we now know 
>that
>some feel like that) would be helped by a more positive wording of the same
>issues in posting guide. The motto should be "help to write better questions"
>rather than "stop asking poor questions". The content is all there in the
>draft, it is more about changing individual words. Re-posting it monthly on
>the list is a good idea.

I shall reread and see if any of it can be written in a more positive 
manner without increasing the length.  I am however reminded of Aesp's 
fable "You can't please everyone" 
(http://home1.gte.net/deleyd/prose/aesop63.htm).

The guide does contain a lot of statements that sound like "rules".  As 
others noted, it is just a guide.  However, it is my observation that 
people are occasionally admonished on R-help for violations of these 
"rules".  I think this is what is intimidating to some.  Part of my 
intention with writing the guide was to try to make explicit and put down 
in one accessible place what these "rules" are. This, I hope, will make it 
easier for beginners and those reluctant to post to know what they should 
actually do, so as to better avoid the acute embarrassment that can come 
from public admonishments.  I also tried to merely reflect the tone of the 
list rather than trying to set the tone.  I suspect that a concise and 
informative guide would be less of an intimidation to posting than seeing 
public admonishments of others and being in the dark about what is actually 
expected of posters (and would be more likely to be read than a longer, 
more chatty and friendly guide.)

I also agree that posting questions to R-help should not be the absolute 
last resort.  That's why I split the suggestions on research into two 
sections: "Do your homework before posting" and "Further resources".  It 
has been my observation that people are sometimes called to task if they 
ask questions without obviously having done the things in the "homework" 
section, but things in the "Further resources" sections are often mentioned 
in responses as friendly suggestions without any implication that the 
poster was negligent for not trying them before posting.

I do like the idea of a brief introduction to the guide, to say something 
like "This guide is intended to help you get the most out of the R mailing 
lists, and to avoid embarrassment.  Like many responses posted on the list, 
it is written in a concise manner.  This is not intended to be unfriendly - 
it is more a consequence of allocating limited time and space to technical 
issues rather than to social niceties."

Both Tom Mulholland and Patrick Burns suggested a checklist section, 
containing things to check before posting.  While I also like this idea, 
most of the content is already there under "homework" and "common 
mistakes". I'm not sure that changing the format will enhance the document 
that much, but I'm perfectly willing to hear opinions.

Please let me know if the following is incorrect: "For questions about 
functions in packages distributed with R (see the FAQ 
<http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#Add-on%20packages%20in%20R>Add-on 
packages in R), ask questions on R-help. If the question relates to a 
package that is downloaded from CRAN try contacting the package maintainers 
first."

Comments welcome, however, at this point, perhaps it would be better to 
send comments to me privately, as most people have probably had enough of 
this discussion.

cheers,

Tony Plate

PS.  There is a slightly corrected and revised version at 
http://pws.prserv.net/tap/posting-guide-draft3.html.  I think it's beyond 
my skills to make it more "friendly" without making it longer.  If anyone 
else wants to take a go at it, feel free!  In the absence of such attempts, 
I'm pretty much done with it.

Tony Plate   tplate@acm.org

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