Hello David,
I am terribly sorry. I could never imagine that my naive questions could offend an experienced R-user such as you so much that he would publicly declare that he is no longer going to help me in the future! Wow; I did not know that using R-Help like this is a cult like activity. You helped me a lot so far. Thank you. I am really grateful to you and people like you who use their time to answers our questions. All I was hoping with my questions was to check if there are alternative ways to utilize R-Help. I never intended to criticize this text based R-Help system or promote instead something else. I do not know how long you have, but I have been using text based email/lists etc. since the VAX days of 70s and 80s. From mainframe to personal OSs, in those times, the text based correspondence was the only media to use. Even in late 90s we wrote our scientific papers using text formatting languages such as Latex. But a lot changed since then. I am not a computer scientist, just an educated user. From a user perspective, the current windows based technologies provide a lot for more effective communication tools than existed in those good old days. I see many posts in R-Help every day in which people struggle to explain plots, math symbols, or posts with data tables with messed up columns, important points lost in text describing something that could have been described with one picture or with a formula instead etc. etc.. So why do we limit ourselves to just plain text as a very limited information medium? Why can't we use a richer format in which some people can still use bare text but others who would enjoy the capabilities offered by such systems. Such an environment could provide means to format questions and answers more effectively. So the issue is not "if I do not like this format I can post my questions/answers somewhere else" ( which is not a solution to problems I mentioned), but rather, "can we be more effective in helping each other?". I, as a newbie, and many others like me, are grateful that you and many like you as the experienced R-Users are helping us to learn the complexities of R. This is wonderful. But it is a totally voluntary act. I post a question, you answer it, I am grateful. I prefer using formatted text to post my questions for effectiveness, you like the simplicity of text in your answers. That's also fine. Nobody is forcing anybody to choose this or that method. So asking for an alternative is not asking a privileged position as you have remarked. It is just asking "can we use a format that satisfies most of us not just some". The "we" in here could be "text only lovers" or "users who might like to use some other media that gives more but allows the use of little for others as well". I read almost all the posts daily to educate myself contrary to your statement. And actually I learned more by reading other's posts than the ones I posted. Because I am a beginner, a novice, I need your and many others' help to learn R more efficiently and quickly. And as you might have noticed, I start my posts, always with a salutation, then use formatted paragraphs to convey my questions while paying attention to tabs, numbered indents, commas, dots etc. etc. I possibly spend more time to ask a question than you do for answering. On top of all this, English is not my mother's language so I have to read each word I use twice with the hope that my sentences will be understood. But none of this extra work bothers me. What bothers me are the assumptions in the statements like "we do not agree with HTML", that you are the "we", and in that "you are welcome to take your questions elsewhere", again, you are the "host" showing me the way. On the issue of receiving many emails and on how to deal with them. I believe (i.e. may or may not be the opinion of others, so I use this term deliberately) a website base R-help will avoid hundreds of users receiving the same hundreds of emails every day clogging the internet. So, rather than tens of thousands of emails circulating every day, only hundreds will and occupy only in one place and in a smaller capacity rather than hundreds of computers wasting many MBs of storage space. A site like this also can offer searching capabilities, posts that can be grouped under special topics such as Statistics in R, Plotting, Formatting, Programming, R Installation etc. etc.an make our life a lot easier. Yes, you can use a special website to do R only searches. It exists. But isn't it simpler to do this also on R-Help.org? Furthermore, every day I have to check my spam folder for R-Help posts since my email program (Outlook 2010) puts some of the posts in the junk folder. Somebody suggested "Stackoverflow" problems as well. These could all be avoided. How about hypertext links in text based posts? I could just click on them to achieve the intent rather than copying the link which in general is broken on the second line to a browser. And if the site offers a posting medium ( I do not care what it is) in which I can format my posts for better impact such that the answerers can understand easily, and be able to attach pictures so that the numbers of words I use would be reduced 1000 times, and where my typos would be corrected, etc. etc. And such a site will not limit anybody just to stick to plain text. Many R-Help users answered the questions I posted on this topic with calm. I hope that I did not insult the feelings of some of you on this very "sensitive" issue. I will continue to use this site to get help and eventually to give help. I am very grateful to all who answered many of my questions how stupid or sensitive they were. Humbly yours. -----Original Message----- From: David Winsemius [mailto:dwinsem...@comcast.net] Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2011 6:22 PM To: Cem Girit Cc: r-help@r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] Web based R-help not a list On Nov 9, 2011, at 5:38 PM, Cem Girit wrote: > Hello, > > Is there a web version of this R-Help user group (such > as the ones under Google Groups) such tha There is Nabble. It's not going to make you any friends unless you learn to post in plain text AND to include context ... too often not done by Nabble users. Gmane is also a possible website that can mirror rhelp. > > 1. I can do a search on any topic over thousands of posts on R > easily > and effectively Yes, several. Have you read the information page and the posting guide yet? > > 2. My mailbox do not overflow with emails so that I do not > need to > edit it every day Yes. You were offered an option to get a digest when you signed up. > > 3. I can arrange to receive only the responses to my posts > automatically Most people reply to both the poster and the the list, but there is no enforcement mechanism. Your unwillingness to do any extra work to educate yourself is duly noted. Speaking only for myself, I will NOT respond to any of your further posts because of your demonstrated privileged attitude. It would not bother me if other regular readers followed my example. > > 4. The content of the post might be better formatted for more > information other than just the text (we now have HTML!) We do not agree that HTML is a better format. You are welcome to take your questions elsewhere if plain text is not acceptable. > > 5. I can attach pictures to my posts for questions related to > plots, > results etc. be quick and effective rather than just links to other > sites .pdf and .txt files are acceptable attachments. > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] I say again: You are welcome to take your questions elsewhere if plain text is not acceptable. -- David Winsemius, MD West Hartford, CT [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.