[R-meta] Some general reflections on the R-sig-meta-analysis mailing list

[Viechtbauer, Wolfgang (SP)]

Thanks, Gerta, also for your many contributions to the discussions!

Just to clarify: I do not want to stifle the more theoretical discussions on this mailing list. I am not aware of any other online places where these kinds of discussions occur (maybe a bit on https://stats.stackexchange.com, but not at this level) and given how much issues around modeling choices/approaches are brought up on this list, there is apparently a need for and interest in this (I still find these the most difficult questions to respond to).

Best,
Wolfgang

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Dr. Gerta Rücker [mailto:ruecker using imbi.uni-freiburg.de]
>Sent: Tuesday, 12 October, 2021 16:01
>To: Viechtbauer, Wolfgang (SP); R meta
>Subject: Re: [R-meta] Some general reflections on the R-sig-meta-analysis mailing
>list
>
>Dear Wolfgang (and also Guido and Michael),
>
>Thank you very much for putting so much effort into this mailing list!
>It has, particularly just in the last weeks, become such a lively
>discussion forum, and generally people get very quickly well-founded
>answers, even to questions relating more to modelling than to R,
>questions that are not at once easy to understand, and sometimes
>questions not even related to R.
>
>Thank you!
>
>Best,
>
>Gerta
>
>Am 12.10.2021 um 14:23 schrieb Viechtbauer, Wolfgang (SP):
>> Dear subscribers to the R-sig-meta-analysis mailing list,
>>
>> It's been about 4 years since this mailing list was founded -- to be precise,
>on Tue 2017/06/06 15:05 CEST -- with the first post appearing on Jun 11 by yours
>truly (https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-meta-analysis/2017-June/000000.html).
>Some of the reasons for starting this list are detailed in that post.
>>
>> This list is managed by Guido Schwarzer, Michael Dewey, and me. This mostly
>involves dealing with posts from non-subscribers, since only people subscribed to
>the list can send posts to it -- for good reasons. Quite a bit of such non-
>subscriber posts are spam and we would not want this to go unfiltered to you. We
>also keep updating the filter to prevent repeated spam posts from the same
>address (although it's the usual whack-a-mole game). Some non-subscriber posts
>are also legitimate and we want those to go through, so we don't outright reject
>all non-subscriber posts. The amount of work involved with this is acceptable, at
>least so far. In any case, you are subscribed anyway, so thank you for that.
>>
>> Speaking of subscribers -- at the moment, we have 438. I don't know the numbers
>for the other R mailing lists (https://www.r-project.org/mail.html), but leaving
>aside the 'big ones' (like R-help and R-devel), I would venture to guess that we
>are one of the larger ones, especially among the "Special Interest Groups". R-
>sig-mixed-models is probably larger and actually closely related -- since meta-
>analysis models are mixed-effects models -- but R-SIG-meta-analysis was founded
>to really put the focus on meta-analysis and the various packages and techniques
>for this purpose.
>>
>> In terms of activity, I would say that the mailing list is also going well. The
>counts for the number of posts for each year so far are:
>>
>>    year posts
>> 1 2017   447
>> 2 2018   907
>> 3 2019   538
>> 4 2020   670
>> 5 2021   860
>>
>> The number of people who post to the list is quite a bit smaller than the
>number of subscribers, but numerous individuals have expressed to me personally
>that they find the discussions of interest even if they do not actively
>participate and so they stay subscribed. Other people - unable to find the
>unsubscribe instructions - may have added r-sig-meta-analysis using r-project.org to
>their spam filter :)
>>
>> The archives of the mailing list can be found here:
>https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-meta-analysis/ It's a valuable resource as
>many discussions over the years have revolved around similar topics. Finding the
>right information/posts in the archives however is a challenge. Many search
>engines (like Google or DuckDuckGo) allow you to restrict your search to a
>particular site, so if you search for
>>
>> site:https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-meta-analysis
>>
>> followed by your search term(s), you may be able to find relevant information
>more quickly. This will still require some digging though.
>>
>> It would make for a nice (for some definition of 'nice') summer project to go
>through the archives and tag posts by topics or pick out threads that are focused
>on repeating themes (like dealing with dependencies under various circumstances,
>how to address publication bias in more complex models, and so on). I wish I had
>done this from the beginning on and now it would be a pretty time-intensive (but
>valuable) task.
>>
>> At times, posts remain unanswered. This can happen for various reasons,
>starting with the most obvious one that people who could potentially answer just
>don't have the time at that moment. The question may also have been asked and
>addressed before, it may be unclear what the question is asking, and/or it may be
>a rather long post with many sub questions.
>>
>> While I do spent a lot of time answering questions on the mailing list, these
>days I gravitate more towards questions that are relatively short, to the point,
>and focused on R itself. While the discussions on the mailing list often venture
>quite deeply into modeling theory, I actually think this should not be the
>primary focus of the mailing list. These questions are often way too complex to
>be discussed via a mailing list and instead should be discussed with a local
>statistical expert. I realize that such a person is often not available and
>places like the mailing list can be a rescue, but questions along these lines
>probably have a higher chance of remaining unanswered.
>>
>> After searching the archives and making sure that the question or a similar one
>has not been discussed before, my general advice would be break up long questions
>into smaller posts, spread them out over some time, and try to abstract the
>problem away from your own specific case.
>>
>> See also https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-meta-analysis for some
>further instructions before posting.
>>
>> Thanks for reading, subscribing, and participating,
>> Wolfgang