Hear, hear. Getting the questioner to slow down and look at what they really want is key, because if they don't know what they want then their question will be unclear, and I hate answering a question that was never really what the OP was looking for in the first place.
One problem I have encountered is questions where key information is in a linked web page that goes away, rendering the posting archive useless. I suppose as long as gists don't "age out" they can be okay for some questions, but I am still way less likely to go digging there to answer questions in the first place. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeff Newmiller The ..... ..... Go Live... DCN:<jdnew...@dcn.davis.ca.us> Basics: ##.#. ##.#. Live Go... Live: OO#.. Dead: OO#.. Playing Research Engineer (Solar/Batteries O.O#. #.O#. with /Software/Embedded Controllers) .OO#. .OO#. rocks...1k --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity. On August 13, 2014 2:50:16 PM PDT, Sarah Goslee <sarah.gos...@gmail.com> wrote: >Hi John, > >People do sometimes link to external data and code, though I'm not >sure I've seen any in that particular format. > >But, two things to consider. > >A. I'm lazy. If the problem is fully-formed in the email, I'm more >likely to try to solve it than if I have to go download something and >figure out what's in it. (Even leaving aside the potential issues with >downloading random things.) > >B. A *small* reproducible example is usually a good thing. There are >not that many cases where the whole big dataset is necessary. Further, >the exercise of creating a small reproducible example is often enough >to solve the problem, without ever needed to bother R-help at all. > >Granted, I'm also likely to skip posts to the list with enormous >dput() data dumps too. I'm a big fan of the "small" part. > >Sarah > >On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 5:41 PM, John McKown ><john.archie.mck...@gmail.com> wrote: >> This is just a thought that has occurred to me. I don't know if it is >> an "Oh, WOW!" or an "Are you KIDDING?!?" type thought. So I thought >> I'd ask here. >> >> I use github for a few things. Nothing great, but maybe nice. Anyway, >> one feature of GitHub is the GIST feature. What I am used to github >> being for is a project consisting of many complete files. A gist can >> contain many files, but is really for a set of snippets. Such as code >> sequences. Or maybe the output from a dput(). >> >> If I have a "big" problem where I think that having all the data and >> my attempted solutions available, I think it would be far kinder of >me >> to put a _good_ synopsis of the problem here on the list. And a >> clickable URL to the gist I have created for the problem. That would >> decrease the bandwidth on the email server. And save space on it. >And, >> lets face it, in many cases only a few people are going to really >look >> at any given problem "in depth", so why have a huge email go out to >> the entire community? >> >> My idea may not be useful, I really am not sure. But my motive is >> trying to keep everybody's inbox from overflowing. And make it easier >> to supply really good data, but only to those who are interested. >> >> Thanks for any feedback. >> >> ______________________________________________ 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.