How about some sort of happy medium? e.g., in the posting guide include something like
'The people who wrote R, and the people who answers questions on R-help, are volunteers. R software is the product of thousands of hours of time by many highly trained and highly intelligent people. Please respect their time by following the guidelines below; note that failure to follow these guidelines may result in your question being ignored, or in responses that are less detailed than you would like." At the same time (and I don't think this necessarily needs to be posted in any guide), I think that there's no call for rudeness or snippiness on the part of people who answer questions. Very few of the people who post to this list are stupid; many people new to R find the learning curve rather steep. While this doesn't excuse rudeness or arrogance on the part of the people who ASK questions, it also doesn't excuse rudeness or arrogance on the part of those who answer them. Who knows? SOME of the people who ask an ignorant question today may ask an intelligent one tomorrow. SOME of these questions MAY help others on the list, or even (dare I say it?) help the people who develop the code. It MIGHT even happen that someone who asks such a question today helps write something really useful at some point in the future. But none of this will happen if the person stops using R. Peter Peter L. Flom, PhD Assistant Director, Statistics and Data Analysis Core Center for Drug Use and HIV Research National Development and Research Institutes 71 W. 23rd St www.peterflom.com New York, NY 10010 (212) 845-4485 (voice) (917) 438-0894 (fax) ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help