Hi Avi,
I thought about your question over the past few days. A new email list
may help, but I doubt the help will suffice to solve the problem of
forming emails as the existing list prefers.
Here is where I see the source of the problem with using R by way of
getting questions answers.
https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-intro.html
This writing is not an introductory learning piece. This work needs to
be restructured and expanded. It is evident another author would need to
be found who has the writing skills to accomplish the necessary
improvements.
*Stephen Dawson, DSL*
/Executive Strategy Consultant/
Business & Technology
+1 (865) 804-3454
http://www.shdawson.com
On 2/27/22 16:59, Avi Gross via R-help wrote:
Indeed, Jim, the hopeful purpose of interactions here is to help people without
doing the job for them. As you note, sometimes it is help in getting them to
formulate what they are trying to do and maybe see the resolution on their own,
or give enough info that others can troubleshoot.
I have dealt with people on and off forums like this who know very little and
have done some rudimentary search and found something they hope is helpful and
then get stuck. Some have no actual interest in learning R or Python or
anything and see it as a one-time thing. For them, any sustained interaction is
just frustrating. Others may want a tutor, albeit mahy of us here are not
willing or able to provide endless hours to volunteer. And some, may be better
off spending the money to hire someone and I assume there are places they can
be directed.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Lemon <drjimle...@gmail.com>
To: Avi Gross <avigr...@verizon.net>
Cc: r-help@r-project.org <r-help@r-project.org>
Sent: Sun, Feb 27, 2022 4:52 pm
Subject: Re: [R] tidying up
Hi Avi,
I just sent in an answer to a very simple question. In many cases it
seems to me that the real problem isn't apparent from the request.
ektaraK appears to have almost no experience with R (sorry if I'm
wrong). A person in this position may sort of know what they want to
do but do not know how to ask the question. What's a reproducible
example? So I often submit really dumb looking answers that show the
person how to ask the question. If I'm successful, the OP learns how
to do some basic operation, but also learns how to ask the next
question. Until they get there, most responses just give them a typing
exercise.
Jim
On Mon, Feb 28, 2022 at 6:35 AM Avi Gross via R-help
<r-help@r-project.org> wrote:
This mailing list seems to steadily get messages that some see as not relevant
to this forum. In particular, some see it as wrong to bring up some things here
and keep reminding people of some ground rules.
So I want to know, briefly, if it is reasonable to ask a person with a question
or problem to reproduce their problem another way. If using RSTUDIO or one of
many IDE, can they run the code on a naked R interpreter by sourcing the file
or copying it in or typing it anew, or perhaps using IDLE which comes by
default with many installations of R? If using a library (which I like so I am
not really in agreement about the unsuitability) like the tidyverse which is
free and available to all even if loosely associated with the RSTUDIO folks and
that can be run on any version of R that I am aware of, then some questions may
still be fair if they are really about more general R issues as much of the
rest of the code may be base R and may be the cause of whatever issue is being
reported. And, some simple requests like pointing out a missing comma, ...
I have stated my thought before and it boils down to the reality that there are
some things about earlier versions of R that were far from perfect or complete
and a little healthy competition is not a bad thing and may help base R evolve.
Not everything in the tidyverse is better and it keeps evolving and deprecating
older features, but it cannot really be ignored any longer. If you apply for a
job at some company as something of an R expert, you may well be asked by all
kinds of people about their programs that use the tidyverse for help or to help
them solve a problem. You don't have to like it, but if you cannot read it, you
no longer are really qualified in many places.
Ask yourself if a language like R was created from scratch, what graphics might
be built into the base distribution? Would you rather have lattice or ggplot or
perhaps both as well as base R graphics? Would you make many of the built-in
functions more consistent, so for instance, the data being worked on would be
the first argument whenever possible?
One reason there are so many packages is not so much due to the superiority of
R but because people find it lacks quite a bit. Much of that should not be
included, of course, if R is meant to be somewhat on the lean side, and yes,
packages are a deliberate way to extend it when needed. But when people use it
and think they are programming in R, ...
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
______________________________________________
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
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