Best Wishes, spencer graves
Rolf Turner wrote:
This is in response to Gabor Grothendieck's commentary on Tony Plate's draft guidelines for question-askers, which was posted a couple of days ago.
I disagree, from mildly to vehemently with just about everything in Grothendieck's posting. E.g. the ``tone'' of the draft should not be ``friendlier''. The purpose of the guidelines is to encourage the asking of well-thought out questions and discourage the asking of stupid ones. This politically correct ``don't damage their self esteem attitude'' has no place in the r-help list.
A propos of bugs, for the uneducated beginner to assert that there is a ``bug'' in software designed by some of the best and most knowledgeable minds in the discipline, when the software works as documented, is the height of presumptuous arrogance.
The guide is and should be a guide for the question-askers. The responders who are voluntarily giving of their time and (often deep) experise need not be constrained. The R package and this help list are free services provided voluntarily by some great people. If someone asks a stupid question and dislikes being told so in so many words, well, that person is free to take his or her business elsewhere.
The one point I ***agree*** with is that questions about statistical methodology should not be discouraged in any way, even if they are not directly R-related. There is always some sort of relationship, such questions are interesting, and there is almost always some insight to be gained by thinking about them in an R context.
cheers,
Rolf Turner
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