Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: In rereading this one idea occurred to me. What if the entire R help system were turned into a wiki? That is, ?whatever would take you to the help page, but not on your computer -- rather to the same page on the wiki. This seems to assume that you are attached to the internet (or at least that R can reliably tell if you are). I am not at all experienced with such things but wouldn't it be possible to handle the wiki html files similar to a package and download the wiki files on your harddrive? And everytime when you are connected to the web you can update your wiki files like someone does with regular packages? Then R can open a browser, the user can use the wiki but the internet connection is not mandatory. regards Martin -- __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
RE: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
Tony == Tony Plate [EMAIL PROTECTED]
on Wed, 17 Dec 2003 18:04:34 -0700 writes:
Tony The suggestions of Tom (posting guide) and Andy (Eric
Tony Raymond's How To Ask Questions The Smart Way) are
Tony both good. Perhaps a good place to put an actual
Tony posting guide and a link to Raymond's page would be at
Tony the page pointed to by the link at the bottom of every
Tony posting to R-help (ie
Tony https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help).
Thank you for the suggestion; note however that this is a
dynamically created page (by mailman) which is pretty tedious to
edit much, or even have much text added. I can add one or two
short paragraphs with more hyperlinks; however I think it would
be better (and much better maintainable by all of R-core) to add
more to the General Instructions section of the R-project page
on the mailing list, http://www.R-project.org/mail.html#instructions
which is pointed to (and you also mention below), or even split
that page into more.
Alternatively, even point to a page that you (someone in the R
community) maintain.
Tony I'm pretty sure that most people who are discouraged
Tony from posting for fear of being scolded would be
Tony willing to read at least that page. And currently
Tony there are not many guidelines for posting on either
Tony that page or on the General Instructions page it has
Tony a link to.
Tony Since these things happen only if some starts them,
Tony I'll post the raw beginnings of a posting guide by the
Tony end of the week (that is if there are no objections
Tony and no-one else beats me to it).
Yes, that would be real useful, and a service to the community,
please use plain html -- thank you in advance!
Tony On a related note, one of the few guidelines that is
Tony under the General Instructions seems to be
Tony potentially misleading to those who fail to understand
Tony the distinction between R developers and package
Tony maintainers (which is probably most beginners):
It is recommended that you send mail to r-help (or
r-devel if appropriate) rather than only to the R
developers (who are also subscribed to the list, of
course). This may save them precious time they can use
for constantly improving R, and will typically also
result in much quicker feedback for yourself.
We'll gladly accept improvements to this:
pIt is recommended that you send mail to r-help (or r-devel if
appropriate) rather than only to the emR/em developers (who are also
subscribed to the list, of course). This may save them precious time they
can use for constantly improving emR/em, and will typically also
result in much quicker feedback for yourself. /p
Tony (I say this seems misleading because I've seen quite a
Tony few times, in response to a post about a problem with
Tony a package, people told that they should have contacted
Tony the package maintainer first.)
I'm not sure that this would be improved by a better text
above. The main reason is that those posters are not aware of
the difference of the R standard packages and arbitrary CRAN packages
{the 'Recommended' ones taking a bit of a role in between: They
do have unique maintainers, but problems potentially affect
everyone, and R-core does take some moral responsibility for them}
Further on the orginal subject:
I think Frank Harrell's point (not a different list, but a new
medium!) and subsequent suggestions do make much sense:
If some of you can donate your time (and that *is* needed!) to
build and actively maintain a forum / bulletin board / web-meeting place
that could be a valuable asset for the R-project. We (R core)
shouldn't have to use our resources for such a maintenance though.
Martin Maechler [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://stat.ethz.ch/~maechler/
Seminar fuer Statistik, ETH-Zentrum LEO C16Leonhardstr. 27
ETH (Federal Inst. Technology) 8092 Zurich SWITZERLAND
phone: x-41-1-632-3408 fax: ...-1228
__
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
A 14:57 17/12/2003 +0100, Martin Wegmann a écrit: Hello, Roger Bivand wrote: appropriate light. One basic characteristic seems to be that if the question does indicate seriousness about trying to analyse data, respect for the task at hand, then predictably lots of good advice comes quickly. yes, I also experienced that (from the questioner point) I'm also not too sure about the learning R question. Of course there is the GUI/CLI issue, and the very many defaults already filled in issue, but actually market share really isn't a driver here, is it? Isn't this ok, I get this point - R can be seen more as philosphie than commercial thinking of getting market shares. i think it is a trade-off between spreading R and being a member of a geek statistic program (that's what SPSS user in this dept. think about us R user ;-) ) more about attitude and motivation in taking an active role in analysing data? If your research question really itches, what should it take to stop you learning R (or associated packages)? probably the steep learing curve but of course if you really want, you will suceed and explorere the advanteages of R. I think there is a deeper problem here: in many cases, scientists come to data analysis as a necessity to publish their results. They look for quick answers when analysing data. Thus learning a completely new system of data analysis may seem not only steep, but of limited interest. That sounds a bit like an elitist point of view - who really wants to use R will eventually suceed.but that's like everywhere in the opensource community - to get started with Linux or other software is still quite rough but a lot of people are doing it because of various reasons. This community has a great support mentality and are more worth than any commercial support and therefore it is possible. but I don't want to start a flame about this issue (elitist geek software ;-) )and therefore I would like to propose a evaluation - better in a separate mail to keep the overview. regards Martin __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help Emmanuel Paradis Laboratoire de Paléontologie Institut des Sciences de l'Évolution Université Montpellier II F-34095 Montpellier cédex 05 France phone: +33 4 67 14 39 64 fax: +33 4 67 14 36 10 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.isem.univ-montp2.fr/PPP/PPPphylogenie/ParadisHome.php __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
RE: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Mulholland, Tom wrote: 1 An assumption on my part is that there is fundamental agreement that the document is the best source for advice on how to ask questions of this list I don't think its the best possible source. It may well be the best existing source. On bug reporting, I think Simon Tatham's essay at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html is a definite improvement over the GNU emacs-based text in the FAQ. It makes basically the same points, but explains *why*. -thomas __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: In rereading this one idea occurred to me. What if the entire R help system were turned into a wiki? That is, ?whatever would take you to the help page, but not on your computer -- rather to the same page on the wiki. This seems to assume that you are attached to the internet (or at least that R can reliably tell if you are). -thomas __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
I had made a second subsequent suggestion to address this. See: https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2003-December/042234.html --- Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 07:48:26 -0800 (PST) From: Thomas Lumley [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Gabor Grothendieck [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: In rereading this one idea occurred to me. What if the entire R help system were turned into a wiki? That is, ?whatever would take you to the help page, but not on your computer -- rather to the same page on the wiki. This seems to assume that you are attached to the internet (or at least that R can reliably tell if you are). -thomas __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: My personal view on this is that there is need for a friendly list with a more customer service attitude than r-help. This is not a balanced view. In a project like ours, you really do need to put participation in balance. If you don't offset perhaps direct but concise and accurate advice by concurrent commitment to other areas of the project (often not visible on this list), then you don't get a balanced picture. Please also recall that questions asked can be a valuable input to discussions about when legacy behaviour of functions has become too difficult to understand - very often leading to changes at least in documentation. This is a good reason for not trying to divert questions to a separate list (I think developers and package maintainers would not be likely to read such a list), lack of shared archives is a second. What can cause irritation is when list users are given accurate advice, like read the documentation, read the FAQ, often with hints or actual solutions, and then come back with the same question, so obviously not valuing the advice offered. Note that people offering advice try to take account of language issues, English is not the native language of many (most?) list users. Also note that the reply time for obvious answers is very short, most often just the name of the function. Is this impolite, really? r-help is really very useful but its also intimidating and I bet lots of people have questions that they never ask for fear of the response. Maybe some of them even decide not to learn R. I do not think you would win your bet. The questions attracting tougher responses are either the do my homework for me type, or the I'll ignore the good advice I was given and repeat my question type. Think of the list as a graduate seminar - is a sharp comment never appropriate? I'm sure that I can remember very helpful sharp comments from my teachers and fellow-students (maybe too few?) that made me see things in a more appropriate light. One basic characteristic seems to be that if the question does indicate seriousness about trying to analyse data, respect for the task at hand, then predictably lots of good advice comes quickly. I'm also not too sure about the learning R question. Of course there is the GUI/CLI issue, and the very many defaults already filled in issue, but actually market share really isn't a driver here, is it? Isn't this more about attitude and motivation in taking an active role in analysing data? If your research question really itches, what should it take to stop you learning R (or associated packages)? As has already been said, there is a lot of documentation. It is possible that something more like edited weblogs from beginners could be collated which - if indexed for searching - would function better than a beginners list - a link to something like this was posted a couple of months ago. --- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 00:49:15 +0100 From: Martin Wegmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Spencer Graves [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up Hello, I agree completely that well thought out questions are important to receive good and quick replies and I agree as well that the replies on the R-help list are very good and helpful. But I had to learn and I am still learing how to write good questions and appreciate Spencer's explanantion how a good question should look like in his opinion. I am not sure how this new mailing list might evolve. It might be that the R-beginner list takes some load of the R-help list by reducing the amount of basic questions which won't be questioned anymore here (what aren't many) and that new user might be taught to post good question before they start posting to R-help. If it proves to be ineffective or might affect R-help in some unwanted manner it would be an easy one to shut it down. I doubt that it will split the R-help list - in my opinion it is unlikely that medium/experienced R user who will subscribe to R-beginner will unsubscribe from the R-help list. Moreover people starting with R are less likely to send any mails to this list, some do and are refered in most cases to the manuals. When I started R I looked through the archive and because I did not understand even one question, I was intimidated by this list and did not send any mail until a few weeks later (that was not because of the statistics but the commands) For this kind of people the R-beginner list is thought - to encourage them to send stupid questions during their first steps in R. They shall recognize questions they would have asked themselves. Therefore I think that the quality of the question is in this case less important than it's level. I hope I did not misunderstood some points ,-) best regards Martin On Tuesday 16 December 2003 17:20
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
After thinking this over, I think it's a good idea to have the beginner list (and I have subscribed). While I greatly appreciate this list, and the tremendous amount of help I've gotten from it, the style of this list is, usually, to give fairly short replies (e.g. try ?function) This is fine. Different lists have different styles, and people here are, after all, donating their time and expertise. But I think that, on the beginner list, there should be a different style. I think answers should be lengthier, and more discursive. A beginner who gets a reply like try searching help is likely to be put off. As a relative newbie myself (and one who has to work in SAS as well as R) I still find myself having 'translation diffiuculties'. What do others think? Has anyone else subscribed to the beginner list yet? 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) Martin Wegmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/16/2003 6:49:15 PM Hello, I agree completely that well thought out questions are important to receive good and quick replies and I agree as well that the replies on the R-help list are very good and helpful. But I had to learn and I am still learing how to write good questions and appreciate Spencer's explanantion how a good question should look like in his opinion. I am not sure how this new mailing list might evolve. It might be that the R-beginner list takes some load of the R-help list by reducing the amount of basic questions which won't be questioned anymore here (what aren't many) and that new user might be taught to post good question before they start posting to R-help. If it proves to be ineffective or might affect R-help in some unwanted manner it would be an easy one to shut it down. I doubt that it will split the R-help list - in my opinion it is unlikely that medium/experienced R user who will subscribe to R-beginner will unsubscribe from the R-help list. Moreover people starting with R are less likely to send any mails to this list, some do and are refered in most cases to the manuals. When I started R I looked through the archive and because I did not understand even one question, I was intimidated by this list and did not send any mail until a few weeks later (that was not because of the statistics but the commands) For this kind of people the R-beginner list is thought - to encourage them to send stupid questions during their first steps in R. They shall recognize questions they would have asked themselves. Therefore I think that the quality of the question is in this case less important than it's level. I hope I did not misunderstood some points ,-) best regards Martin On Tuesday 16 December 2003 17:20, Spencer Graves wrote: I agree with Tony's observation that well thought out questions are more likely to receive an answer than something that is long, rambling, and poorly focused. Many questions take more time to read than I have available, so I don't bother. I like questions that include toy examples in a few lines of code that I can copy from an email into R and test ideas. Careful formatting that looks pretty in an email is an obstacle for me, because it increases the work required to get it into R. Many questioners could answer their own problems in the process of generating such a toy example. When they can't, that exercise helps them focus the question, which makes it easier for potential respondents to understand the problem and reply. Without that, I must either generate a toy example myself (which I've done many times) or respond with untested code and risk looking stupid when my untested suggestion doesn't work. hope this helps. spencer graves A.J. Rossini wrote: Pascal A. Niklaus [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: - In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the R language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time some members of the R core team spend answering relatively basic questions, and by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There are these excellent mailing list archives, so why fragment this list? To follow up, well-thought through basic questions do get answered; in particular, they can be useful for those of us writing packages, documentation, etc. I have a sense that it is the quality of the question (details of what is intended to do, or not known, signs of using other sources of materials which folks have spent years on, no signs that this is a do my work for me question) rather than the level of the question, that is an issue. best, -tony __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
Gabor Grothendieck wrote: My personal view on this is that there is need for a friendly list with a more customer service attitude than r-help. God save us from a ``customer service attitude'' --- bland, fatuous, feel-good useless twaddle! If you want a ``custome service'' attitude go and use Microsoft's crap! The subscribers to this list are not customers, they are participants in a collective endeavour. Those who come in with an ``I'm a customer; service me'' (;-)) attitude should look elsewhere. If they are such wimps that they collapse from being told a few brusque home truths, they shouldn't be doing statistical computing in the first place. When a Certain Guru rips strips off people (God knows he's done it to me often enough) on this list, there's a damned good reason for it. cheers, Rolf Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
On 17-Dec-03 Peter Flom wrote: After thinking this over, I think it's a good idea to have the beginner list (and I have subscribed). [...] What do others think? Has anyone else subscribed to the beginner list yet? Peter Perhaps there has now been enough discussion of whether such a list is a good idea; it should now go ahead and prove its usefulness and desirability (or not) in practice. I also think that it would be very useful for more experienced R users, if so inclined, to subscribe to it (I have done so). As to questions going to the beginners' list rather than r-help, the more experienced members could usefully propose that someone's question would be a good one for r-help. Let's see how it goes, and support Martin Wegman's initiative. Best wishes to all, Ted. E-Mail: (Ted Harding) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 17-Dec-03 Time: 14:21:29 -- XFMail -- __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
I agree that - wikis (see the successful one for the lua programming language at: http://lua-users.org/wiki/ ) - forums are nice. Actually someone did set up an R wiki some time ago at: http://fawn.unibw-hamburg.de/cgi-bin/Rwiki.pl?RwikiHome yet no one really used it. Some critical mass of use is needed to get such a project off the ground. Other ways of communicating include: - a moderated list - a blog/summary such as this one for the Python language: http://www.pythonware.com/daily/index.htm or this one for the Ruby language: http://www.rubygarden.org/rurl/html/index.html Unfortunately these last two require a sustained effort on someone's part and I suspect no one would be willing to commit to this. --- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 11:29:11 -0500 From: Frank E Harrell Jr [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ Add to Address Book | Block Address | Report as Spam ] To: rhelp [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up My opinion is that separate lists are not needed (and I'm not clear on how the person with the original idea summarized opinions in a way that led to the conclusion that a new list is needed), but that a different medium may be needed. The problem with e-mail is that to many users, especially those who don't search the archives, e-mail is memoryless, and that individual e-mail messages become cumulative rather than being corrected or updated. How many times have we seen almost identical questions posed only days apart? A well-organized discussion board (e.g. http://www.knoppix.net/forum) or wiki (e.g. using methods provided by twiki.org - see http://web.brandeis.edu/pages/view/ITS for a nice example; other users will know of better examples) is worth considering. It would be especially nice if before pressing the Submit New Message button a user had to check a few boxes acknowledging that she had consulted various sources of information, and besides the checkboxes would be links to those sources. Topics and subtopics would have to be created by an administrator but users could add sub sub topics and, optimally, edit other users' responses. This approach would IMHO get better participation by both novices and experts than would having two lists. --- Frank E Harrell Jr Professor and Chair School of Medicine Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
I completely agree with Frank Harrell's suggestion that email is a problem for beginners (who often don't know about the various searchable archives, or find them overwhelming because the massive amount that they contain, much of which is bound to be irrelevant or too advanced). I don't think a Wiki is the right thing. It isn't intended for the sort of discussion I imagine. (And I don't know immediately how to set one up. But, if someone else wants to do it ...) However, I volunteer to set up a VERY simple bulletin board using Bazookaboard, for a start. If it becomes too big, I may have to switch to something with more features. Too see an example, see my class bb for this term: http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~baron/p253/ (The course was Behavioral law and economics, and students did not have to post their comments this way, so there isn't much there.) Or, someone else can do it. But I do think this is a good idea. Jon -- Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page:http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron R page: http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/ __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
Hello, Roger Bivand wrote: appropriate light. One basic characteristic seems to be that if the question does indicate seriousness about trying to analyse data, respect for the task at hand, then predictably lots of good advice comes quickly. yes, I also experienced that (from the questioner point) I'm also not too sure about the learning R question. Of course there is the GUI/CLI issue, and the very many defaults already filled in issue, but actually market share really isn't a driver here, is it? Isn't this ok, I get this point - R can be seen more as philosphie than commercial thinking of getting market shares. i think it is a trade-off between spreading R and being a member of a geek statistic program (that's what SPSS user in this dept. think about us R user ;-) ) more about attitude and motivation in taking an active role in analysing data? If your research question really itches, what should it take to stop you learning R (or associated packages)? probably the steep learing curve but of course if you really want, you will suceed and explorere the advanteages of R. That sounds a bit like an elitist point of view - who really wants to use R will eventually suceed.but that's like everywhere in the opensource community - to get started with Linux or other software is still quite rough but a lot of people are doing it because of various reasons. This community has a great support mentality and are more worth than any commercial support and therefore it is possible. but I don't want to start a flame about this issue (elitist geek software ;-) )and therefore I would like to propose a evaluation - better in a separate mail to keep the overview. regards Martin __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
Hello, On Wednesday 17 December 2003 05:43, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: My personal view on this is that there is need for a friendly list with a more customer service attitude than r-help. well that sounds for me like a shop - customer service- ;-) and that's what R should not become, in my point of view - the R core team members are volunteers and spend their spare time to help strangers and develop great software. I agree with Roger Bivand that answers are from time to time rough due to language problems or because it would take more time to add some nice lines, not because they are rude. But perhaps medium-experienced user who are not very active on this list, might become more active on the beginner list and perhaps spend more time to write nice replies. perhaps ,-) regards Martin r-help is really very useful but its also intimidating and I bet lots of people have questions that they never ask for fear of the response. Maybe some of them even decide not to learn R. --- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 00:49:15 +0100 From: Martin Wegmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Spencer Graves [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up Hello, I agree completely that well thought out questions are important to receive good and quick replies and I agree as well that the replies on the R-help list are very good and helpful. But I had to learn and I am still learing how to write good questions and appreciate Spencer's explanantion how a good question should look like in his opinion. I am not sure how this new mailing list might evolve. It might be that the R-beginner list takes some load of the R-help list by reducing the amount of basic questions which won't be questioned anymore here (what aren't many) and that new user might be taught to post good question before they start posting to R-help. If it proves to be ineffective or might affect R-help in some unwanted manner it would be an easy one to shut it down. I doubt that it will split the R-help list - in my opinion it is unlikely that medium/experienced R user who will subscribe to R-beginner will unsubscribe from the R-help list. Moreover people starting with R are less likely to send any mails to this list, some do and are refered in most cases to the manuals. When I started R I looked through the archive and because I did not understand even one question, I was intimidated by this list and did not send any mail until a few weeks later (that was not because of the statistics but the commands) For this kind of people the R-beginner list is thought - to encourage them to send stupid questions during their first steps in R. They shall recognize questions they would have asked themselves. Therefore I think that the quality of the question is in this case less important than it's level. I hope I did not misunderstood some points ,-) best regards Martin On Tuesday 16 December 2003 17:20, Spencer Graves wrote: I agree with Tony's observation that well thought out questions are more likely to receive an answer than something that is long, rambling, and poorly focused. Many questions take more time to read than I have available, so I don't bother. I like questions that include toy examples in a few lines of code that I can copy from an email into R and test ideas. Careful formatting that looks pretty in an email is an obstacle for me, because it increases the work required to get it into R. Many questioners could answer their own problems in the process of generating such a toy example. When they can't, that exercise helps them focus the question, which makes it easier for potential respondents to understand the problem and reply. Without that, I must either generate a toy example myself (which I've done many times) or respond with untested code and risk looking stupid when my untested suggestion doesn't work. hope this helps. spencer graves A.J. Rossini wrote: Pascal A. Niklaus [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: - In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the R language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time some members of the R core team spend answering relatively basic questions, and by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There are these excellent mailing list archives, so why fragment this list? To follow up, well-thought through basic questions do get answered; in particular, they can be useful for those of us writing packages, documentation, etc. I have a sense that it is the quality of the question (details of what is intended to do, or not known, signs of using other sources of materials which folks have spent years on, no signs that this is a do
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
Rolf Turner wrote: Gabor Grothendieck wrote: My personal view on this is that there is need for a friendly list with a more customer service attitude than r-help. God save us from a ``customer service attitude'' --- bland, fatuous, feel-good useless twaddle! If you want a ``custome service'' attitude go and use Microsoft's crap! I imagine Gabor meant _real_ customer service. The subscribers to this list are not customers, they are participants in a collective endeavour. Those who come in with an ``I'm a customer; service me'' (;-)) attitude should look elsewhere. If they are such wimps that they collapse from being told a few brusque home truths, they shouldn't be doing statistical computing in the first place. I wish that I shared Rolf's idealism here, but there are lots of people who should be doing statistical computing who either aren't doing it at all, or are using decidedly inferior tools (see point 1 above). The easier we can make their introduction to R (and statistics), the better. Comments about a second mailing list are a little off the mark, since there are already 3 mailing lists: R-help, R-devel, R-core. R-beginner would just be another layer. But it is definitely useful to wonder what the best medium is. Given that the list is populated by statisticians, experimenting seems like a natural choice. Patrick Burns Burns Statistics [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 (0)20 8525 0696 http://www.burns-stat.com (home of S Poetry and A Guide for the Unwilling S User) __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
In rereading this one idea occurred to me. What if the entire R help system were turned into a wiki? That is, ?whatever would take you to the help page, but not on your computer -- rather to the same page on the wiki. You would then find the docs as they exist now plus the experiences of other people with that command all at the same place. You could similarly add your own experience to the page. --- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 11:53:59 -0500 (EST) From: Gabor Grothendieck [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up I agree that - wikis (see the successful one for the lua programming language at: http://lua-users.org/wiki/ ) - forums are nice. Actually someone did set up an R wiki some time ago at: http://fawn.unibw-hamburg.de/cgi-bin/Rwiki.pl?RwikiHome yet no one really used it. Some critical mass of use is needed to get such a project off the ground. Other ways of communicating include: - a moderated list - a blog/summary such as this one for the Python language: http://www.pythonware.com/daily/index.htm or this one for the Ruby language: http://www.rubygarden.org/rurl/html/index.html Unfortunately these last two require a sustained effort on someone's part and I suspect no one would be willing to commit to this. --- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 11:29:11 -0500 From: Frank E Harrell Jr [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ Add to Address Book | Block Address | Report as Spam ] To: rhelp [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up My opinion is that separate lists are not needed (and I'm not clear on how the person with the original idea summarized opinions in a way that led to the conclusion that a new list is needed), but that a different medium may be needed. The problem with e-mail is that to many users, especially those who don't search the archives, e-mail is memoryless, and that individual e-mail messages become cumulative rather than being corrected or updated. How many times have we seen almost identical questions posed only days apart? A well-organized discussion board (e.g. http://www.knoppix.net/forum) or wiki (e.g. using methods provided by twiki.org - see http://web.brandeis.edu/pages/view/ITS for a nice example; other users will know of better examples) is worth considering. It would be especially nice if before pressing the Submit New Message button a user had to check a few boxes acknowledging that she had consulted various sources of information, and besides the checkboxes would be links to those sources. Topics and subtopics would have to be created by an administrator but users could add sub sub topics and, optimally, edit other users' responses. This approach would IMHO get better participation by both novices and experts than would having two lists. --- Frank E Harrell Jr Professor and Chair School of Medicine Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
On 12/17/03 12:19, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: In rereading this one idea occurred to me. What if the entire R help system were turned into a wiki? That is, ?whatever would take you to the help page, but not on your computer -- rather to the same page on the wiki. You would then find the docs as they exist now plus the experiences of other people with that command all at the same place. You could similarly add your own experience to the page. Perhaps a good example is http://www.php.net/manual/en/ But this is a lot of work to set up. I'd rather take small steps. I do plan to look into phpbb as an alternative to bazookaboard*, but not today, and probably not tomorrow. So if things proceed without me, so be it. Jon *I remember rejecting phpbb once, but I sort of gave myself 30 minutes to install something, not wanting to spend more time than that. Bazookaboard met that test, and nothing else did. But I could raise the cutoff. -- Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page:http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron R page: http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/ __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
But this is a lot of work to set up. I'd rather take small steps. I do plan to look into phpbb as an alternative to bazookaboard*, but not today, and probably not tomorrow. So if things proceed without me, so be it. Or set up a server running Zope and Plone, and then you can have wikis, boards, news, events - a real R portal in fact - and have a single sign-on for all of it. XHTML compliant and all that. Free and open-source. Bit of a setup and admin overhead though, but the permissions system allows admin to be distributed over trusted users. www.plone.org for info. Baz __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
Barry Rowlingson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
But this is a lot of work to set up. I'd rather take small
steps. I do plan to look into phpbb as an alternative to
bazookaboard*, but not today, and probably not tomorrow. So if
things proceed without me, so be it.
Or set up a server running Zope and Plone, and then you can have
wikis, boards, news, events - a real R portal in fact - and have a
single sign-on for all of it. XHTML compliant and all that. Free and
open-source.
Bit of a setup and admin overhead though, but the permissions system
allows admin to be distributed over trusted users.
Only initially.
I've been a fan of Zope (and ZWiki, and Plone) for years. We are
running a variant in my lab as a prototype, it'll encompass R as well
as the ESS homepage at somepoint soon.
Tres cool...
best,
-tony
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Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
On 17 Dec 2003 at 12:51, Jonathan Baron wrote: On 12/17/03 12:19, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: In rereading this one idea occurred to me. What if the entire R help system were turned into a wiki? That is, ?whatever would take you to the help page, but not on your computer -- rather to the same page on the wiki. You would then find the docs as they exist now plus the experiences of other people Yes, this might be nice, but pls remember that many people in many countries still use machines without web connection, or worse, pay modem time by minute. Or use laptops on planes. But it could be nice to be able to write wiki(lm) as an alternative to help(lm) and maybe the possibility to use options(help) to associate ?lm with whichever one likes. Kjetil Halvorsen with that command all at the same place. You could similarly add your own experience to the page. Perhaps a good example is http://www.php.net/manual/en/ But this is a lot of work to set up. I'd rather take small steps. I do plan to look into phpbb as an alternative to bazookaboard*, but not today, and probably not tomorrow. So if things proceed without me, so be it. Jon *I remember rejecting phpbb once, but I sort of gave myself 30 minutes to install something, not wanting to spend more time than that. Bazookaboard met that test, and nothing else did. But I could raise the cutoff. -- Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page:http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron R page: http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/ __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
A two level solution might be possible as part of this too. If you got ?whatever off your disk then it could contain a link to the corresponding wiki page. If you didn't have a connection you would still get what you get now but just couldn't follow the link. Whenever a new version of R came out the wiki would be replicated back to the help screens so that those with no internet still get some wiki info albeit as a snapshot as of the last release. Your idea of an option setting could work along with the above so that it could be set to go directly to the wiki if you had a connection and preferred that. --- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 18:20:26 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Gabor Grothendieck [EMAIL PROTECTED],Jonathan Baron [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up On 17 Dec 2003 at 12:51, Jonathan Baron wrote: On 12/17/03 12:19, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: In rereading this one idea occurred to me. What if the entire R help system were turned into a wiki? That is, ?whatever would take you to the help page, but not on your computer -- rather to the same page on the wiki. You would then find the docs as they exist now plus the experiences of other people Yes, this might be nice, but pls remember that many people in many countries still use machines without web connection, or worse, pay modem time by minute. Or use laptops on planes. But it could be nice to be able to write wiki(lm) as an alternative to help(lm) and maybe the possibility to use options(help) to associate ?lm with whichever one likes. Kjetil Halvorsen with that command all at the same place. You could similarly add your own experience to the page. Perhaps a good example is http://www.php.net/manual/en/ But this is a lot of work to set up. I'd rather take small steps. I do plan to look into phpbb as an alternative to bazookaboard*, but not today, and probably not tomorrow. So if things proceed without me, so be it. Jon *I remember rejecting phpbb once, but I sort of gave myself 30 minutes to install something, not wanting to spend more time than that. Bazookaboard met that test, and nothing else did. But I could raise the cutoff. -- Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron R page: http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/ __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
RE: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
I have empathy for lots of the points already made, more often on the life is not always easy and you have to work at it flavour because that's where you make the real gains. One particular message early in the piece cited an example of what a good request might look like. Other lists sometime send out regular messages (although they tend to be about the rules of the list) that are intended to make sure that important pieces of information are regularly repeated. I know that there is more than enough talent on this list to put together suggestions for getting quick responses that could be sent out regularly. The sorts of things that might be in it would be when you should attach details of operating system, version etc. (or if they should always be there) as well as comments like those by Spencer Graves and it could include the checklist that someone mentioned (I think that was Frank Harrell). It would almost be a pro-forma for messages and while people don't have to use it, it may help those who do think before they post (we'll never stop some people, because that's just the way they are) Tom Mulholland Tom Mulholland Associates -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Gabor Grothendieck Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 7:09 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up A two level solution might be possible as part of this too. If you got ?whatever off your disk then it could contain a link to the corresponding wiki page. If you didn't have a connection you would still get what you get now but just couldn't follow the link. Whenever a new version of R came out the wiki would be replicated back to the help screens so that those with no internet still get some wiki info albeit as a snapshot as of the last release. Your idea of an option setting could work along with the above so that it could be set to go directly to the wiki if you had a connection and preferred that. --- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 18:20:26 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Gabor Grothendieck [EMAIL PROTECTED],Jonathan Baron [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up On 17 Dec 2003 at 12:51, Jonathan Baron wrote: On 12/17/03 12:19, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: In rereading this one idea occurred to me. What if the entire R help system were turned into a wiki? That is, ?whatever would take you to the help page, but not on your computer -- rather to the same page on the wiki. You would then find the docs as they exist now plus the experiences of other people Yes, this might be nice, but pls remember that many people in many countries still use machines without web connection, or worse, pay modem time by minute. Or use laptops on planes. But it could be nice to be able to write wiki(lm) as an alternative to help(lm) and maybe the possibility to use options(help) to associate ?lm with whichever one likes. Kjetil Halvorsen with that command all at the same place. You could similarly add your own experience to the page. Perhaps a good example is http://www.php.net/manual/en/ But this is a lot of work to set up. I'd rather take small steps. I do plan to look into phpbb as an alternative to bazookaboard*, but not today, and probably not tomorrow. So if things proceed without me, so be it. Jon *I remember rejecting phpbb once, but I sort of gave myself 30 minutes to install something, not wanting to spend more time than that. Bazookaboard met that test, and nothing else did. But I could raise the cutoff. -- Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron R page: http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/ __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. --- __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
RE: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
From: Tom Mulholland
I have empathy for lots of the points already made, more
often on the life
is not always easy and you have to work at it flavour because
that's where
you make the real gains.
One particular message early in the piece cited an example of
what a good
request might look like. Other lists sometime send out
regular messages
(although they tend to be about the rules of the list) that
are intended to
make sure that important pieces of information are regularly repeated.
I know that there is more than enough talent on this list to
put together
suggestions for getting quick responses that could be sent
out regularly.
The sorts of things that might be in it would be when you
should attach
details of operating system, version etc. (or if they should always be
there) as well as comments like those by Spencer Graves and
it could include
the checklist that someone mentioned (I think that was Frank
Harrell). It
would almost be a pro-forma for messages and while people
don't have to use
it, it may help those who do think before they post (we'll
never stop some
people, because that's just the way they are)
Tom Mulholland
Tom Mulholland Associates
Please see Eric Raymond's How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
(http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html).
(One of these days I shall take up Martin's suggestion and write an entry
for R-FAQ pointing to it. The problem is getting people to actually read
the FAQ, let alone links in the FAQ...)
Best,
Andy
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RE: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
The suggestions of Tom (posting guide) and Andy (Eric Raymond's How To Ask
Questions The Smart Way) are both good. Perhaps a good place to put an
actual posting guide and a link to Raymond's page would be at the page
pointed to by the link at the bottom of every posting to R-help (ie
https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help). I'm pretty sure
that most people who are discouraged from posting for fear of being scolded
would be willing to read at least that page. And currently there are not
many guidelines for posting on either that page or on the General
Instructions page it has a link to.
Since these things happen only if some starts them, I'll post the raw
beginnings of a posting guide by the end of the week (that is if there are
no objections and no-one else beats me to it).
On a related note, one of the few guidelines that is under the General
Instructions seems to be potentially misleading to those who fail to
understand the distinction between R developers and package maintainers
(which is probably most beginners):
It is recommended that you send mail to r-help (or r-devel if appropriate)
rather than only to the R developers (who are also subscribed to the list,
of course). This may save them precious time they can use for constantly
improving R, and will typically also result in much quicker feedback for
yourself.
(I say this seems misleading because I've seen quite a few times, in
response to a post about a problem with a package, people told that they
should have contacted the package maintainer first.)
-- Tony Plate
At Wednesday 07:26 PM 12/17/2003 -0500, Liaw, Andy wrote:
From: Tom Mulholland
I have empathy for lots of the points already made, more
often on the life
is not always easy and you have to work at it flavour because
that's where
you make the real gains.
One particular message early in the piece cited an example of
what a good
request might look like. Other lists sometime send out
regular messages
(although they tend to be about the rules of the list) that
are intended to
make sure that important pieces of information are regularly repeated.
I know that there is more than enough talent on this list to
put together
suggestions for getting quick responses that could be sent
out regularly.
The sorts of things that might be in it would be when you
should attach
details of operating system, version etc. (or if they should always be
there) as well as comments like those by Spencer Graves and
it could include
the checklist that someone mentioned (I think that was Frank
Harrell). It
would almost be a pro-forma for messages and while people
don't have to use
it, it may help those who do think before they post (we'll
never stop some
people, because that's just the way they are)
Tom Mulholland
Tom Mulholland Associates
Please see Eric Raymond's How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
(http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html).
(One of these days I shall take up Martin's suggestion and write an entry
for R-FAQ pointing to it. The problem is getting people to actually read
the FAQ, let alone links in the FAQ...)
Best,
Andy
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[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
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RE: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
The fact that I've been using R for quite a while now and did not know
about this document is supporting evidence of the need to get this sort
of information out there.
However that big list is going to daunt some people, it would have
daunted me at the beginning. At a time when you are digesting a whole
new universe (wonderful though it is) some short and pithy help is
welcome. I expect that there would be a consensus on which topics are
essential to improve the quality of questions. It is this select group
of comments that could be put in a standard email sent out once a month.
I would assume that the link to Eric Raymond's How To Ask Questions The
Smart Way1 would be part of the advice. That is if you're going to
spoon feed, then spoon feed the advice that helps the list most and
encourage new list members to take the time to read the longer document.
I think this special treatment is warranted because the issue is not
about R per-se, it is about this list, so it makes more sense to have it
coming out of this list rather than an entry in the R-FAQ. Although I
can't see a reason for not doing both.
Hmmm. Before I post this I had better go and see what Eric has to say
about this sort of message.
Ciao, Tom
1 An assumption on my part is that there is fundamental agreement that
the document is the best source for advice on how to ask questions of
this list
_
Tom Mulholland
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WA Country Health Service
Tel: (08) 9222 4062
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-Original Message-
From: Liaw, Andy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, 18 December 2003 8:26 AM
To: 'Tom Mulholland'
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
From: Tom Mulholland
I have empathy for lots of the points already made, more
often on the life
is not always easy and you have to work at it flavour because
that's where
you make the real gains.
One particular message early in the piece cited an example of
what a good
request might look like. Other lists sometime send out
regular messages
(although they tend to be about the rules of the list) that
are intended to
make sure that important pieces of information are regularly repeated.
I know that there is more than enough talent on this list to
put together
suggestions for getting quick responses that could be sent
out regularly.
The sorts of things that might be in it would be when you
should attach
details of operating system, version etc. (or if they should always be
there) as well as comments like those by Spencer Graves and
it could include
the checklist that someone mentioned (I think that was Frank
Harrell). It
would almost be a pro-forma for messages and while people
don't have to use
it, it may help those who do think before they post (we'll
never stop some
people, because that's just the way they are)
Tom Mulholland
Tom Mulholland Associates
Please see Eric Raymond's How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
(http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html).
(One of these days I shall take up Martin's suggestion and write an
entry for R-FAQ pointing to it. The problem is getting people to
actually read the FAQ, let alone links in the FAQ...)
Best,
Andy
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Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
Dear R-user, I already received quite a lot of replies to this mail and like to do a preliminary sum up. A few were sceptical about the use of such a beginner mailing list. The arguments were that people starting with R will only stay subscribed for a short time until they reached the R-help level and therefore only beginner will teach beginner how to use R. But as far as I can judge, the majority of people who replied to this mail are medium to experienced user who like to help beginner but does not call themselves highly experienced user as the main answerers on the R-help mailing list. Therefore I assume that, even though some answers might be wrong, the threat of possibly wrong answers might be minimal, due to various experienced users who like to subsribe to this list. The majority of replies were positive about such a list and welcomed the idea to encourage new user by providing a basic R mailing list, like the already existent corresponding manuals in the contributed documentation at r-project.org. And again, this list shall only provide a basic and smooth introduction into R and its capabilities. Questions like; How do I make my labels in a graphic bigger? - How do I change the colour? - etc. are welcome and surely would annoy the majority of R-help user because it is mentioned somewhere on the first 10 pages of every manual, but people who are used to click on a graphic and change it in a second would not be convinced that R can do great graphics. well, I would welcome if there would be more discussion about it or to give it a try (perhaps mention it on the r-project web-site) and look how productive this mailing list proves to be. The address of the R-beginner mailing list is: https://lists.uni-wuerzburg.de/mailman/listinfo/r-beginner best regards, Martin -- Neu: Preissenkung für MMS und FreeMMS! http://www.gmx.net __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
RE: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
I think a separate list is redundant. Many basic questions do get answered. My impression is that *who* is asking, determines the response. A poli-sci student asking the same question as a more (presumably) technically resourceful, say CS person, is more likely to get a helpful response, vs a flame. The simple questions doesn't bother me, I just ignore them. But, it's not my list and I can see how they may bother the list maintainers and 'regular' experts. But I think it's futile (and not worth the raised blood pressure) to get too hot and bothered about those postings. Just my opinion. - Iyue -Original Message- From: Martin Wegmann [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 8:18 AM To: R-list Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up Dear R-user, I already received quite a lot of replies to this mail and like to do a preliminary sum up. A few were sceptical about the use of such a beginner mailing list. The arguments were that people starting with R will only stay subscribed for a short time until they reached the R-help level and therefore only beginner will teach beginner how to use R. But as far as I can judge, the majority of people who replied to this mail are medium to experienced user who like to help beginner but does not call themselves highly experienced user as the main answerers on the R-help mailing list. Therefore I assume that, even though some answers might be wrong, the threat of possibly wrong answers might be minimal, due to various experienced users who like to subsribe to this list. The majority of replies were positive about such a list and welcomed the idea to encourage new user by providing a basic R mailing list, like the already existent corresponding manuals in the contributed documentation at r-project.org. And again, this list shall only provide a basic and smooth introduction into R and its capabilities. Questions like; How do I make my labels in a graphic bigger? - How do I change the colour? - etc. are welcome and surely would annoy the majority of R-help user because it is mentioned somewhere on the first 10 pages of every manual, but people who are used to click on a graphic and change it in a second would not be convinced that R can do great graphics. well, I would welcome if there would be more discussion about it or to give it a try (perhaps mention it on the r-project web-site) and look how productive this mailing list proves to be. The address of the R-beginner mailing list is: https://lists.uni-wuerzburg.de/mailman/listinfo/r-beginner best regards, Martin -- Neu: Preissenkung für MMS und FreeMMS! http://www.gmx.net __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help Secure Server made the following annotations on 12/16/2003 08:33:16 AM -- This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
Martin Wegmann wrote: Dear R-user, I already received quite a lot of replies to this mail and like to do a preliminary sum up. A few were sceptical about the use of such a beginner mailing list. The arguments were that people starting with R will only stay subscribed for a short time until they reached the R-help level and therefore only beginner will teach beginner how to use R. But as far as I can judge, the majority of people who replied to this mail are medium to experienced user who like to help beginner but does not call themselves highly experienced user as the main answerers on the R-help mailing list. Therefore I assume that, even though some answers might be wrong, the threat of possibly wrong answers might be minimal, due to various experienced users who like to subsribe to this list. The majority of replies were positive about such a list and welcomed the idea to encourage new user by providing a basic R mailing list, like the already existent corresponding manuals in the contributed documentation at r-project.org. And again, this list shall only provide a basic and smooth introduction into R and its capabilities. Questions like; How do I make my labels in a graphic bigger? - How do I change the colour? - etc. are welcome and surely would annoy the majority of R-help user because it is mentioned somewhere on the first 10 pages of every manual, but people who are used to click on a graphic and change it in a second would not be convinced that R can do great graphics. well, I would welcome if there would be more discussion about it or to give it a try (perhaps mention it on the r-project web-site) and look how productive this mailing list proves to be. The address of the R-beginner mailing list is: https://lists.uni-wuerzburg.de/mailman/listinfo/r-beginner best regards, Martin Myself being relatively new to R, I'd like to comment on the idea of a new list: - In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the R language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time some members of the R core team spend answering relatively basic questions, and by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There are these excellent mailing list archives, so why fragment this list? - The kind of questions that generally do not get answered are the ones which involve statistical issues (What is the appropriate model for my data?, what is the difference between lm and aov?, Is that model correct? etc...). Since many beginners to R are probably also beginners in statistics, I could see some need for a list dedicated to statistical topics somehow related to R. For example, many people new to R seem to have problems adapting some basic mixed-effects models and repeated measures analyses they ran in SAS od SPSS. These kind of questions generally do not get answered, and some hints on how to adapt some of the examples in Pinheiro Bates could be helpful. But this is unlikely to happen on a separate r-beginner list too. Pascal __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
Pascal A. Niklaus [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
- In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the R
language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time
some members of the R core team spend answering relatively basic
questions, and by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I
cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There are these
excellent mailing list archives, so why fragment this list?
To follow up, well-thought through basic questions do get answered; in
particular, they can be useful for those of us writing packages,
documentation, etc.
I have a sense that it is the quality of the question (details of what
is intended to do, or not known, signs of using other sources of
materials which folks have spent years on, no signs that this is a do
my work for me question) rather than the level of the question, that
is an issue.
best,
-tony
--
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Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
On 12/16/03 16:09, Pascal A. Niklaus wrote: - In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the R language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time some members of the R core team spend answering relatively basic questions, and by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There are these excellent mailing list archives, so why fragment this list? Yikes! I now realize that my initial support of the idea for the list must be qualified considerably. If this list is started, its archives become quite important. Who will do that? And will I have the time/energy/inclination to incorporate it into my own search database? I'd rather not have one more thing to do. But if the list gets off the ground - and it seems already at least close to the end of the runway - I'll have to do it eventually in order to have a complete archive. Jon -- Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page:http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron R page: http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/ __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
I agree with Tony's observation that well thought out questions are more likely to receive an answer than something that is long, rambling, and poorly focused. Many questions take more time to read than I have available, so I don't bother. I like questions that include toy examples in a few lines of code that I can copy from an email into R and test ideas. Careful formatting that looks pretty in an email is an obstacle for me, because it increases the work required to get it into R. Many questioners could answer their own problems in the process of generating such a toy example. When they can't, that exercise helps them focus the question, which makes it easier for potential respondents to understand the problem and reply. Without that, I must either generate a toy example myself (which I've done many times) or respond with untested code and risk looking stupid when my untested suggestion doesn't work. hope this helps. spencer graves A.J. Rossini wrote: Pascal A. Niklaus [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: - In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the R language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time some members of the R core team spend answering relatively basic questions, and by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There are these excellent mailing list archives, so why fragment this list? To follow up, well-thought through basic questions do get answered; in particular, they can be useful for those of us writing packages, documentation, etc. I have a sense that it is the quality of the question (details of what is intended to do, or not known, signs of using other sources of materials which folks have spent years on, no signs that this is a do my work for me question) rather than the level of the question, that is an issue. best, -tony __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
If the archives were placed on www.r-project.org then googling for whatever site:r-project.org would find anything in them along with anything already on the site. --- Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 10:31:32 -0500 From: Jonathan Baron [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Pascal A. Niklaus [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up On 12/16/03 16:09, Pascal A. Niklaus wrote: - In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the R language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time some members of the R core team spend answering relatively basic questions, and by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There are these excellent mailing list archives, so why fragment this list? Yikes! I now realize that my initial support of the idea for the list must be qualified considerably. If this list is started, its archives become quite important. Who will do that? And will I have the time/energy/inclination to incorporate it into my own search database? I'd rather not have one more thing to do. But if the list gets off the ground - and it seems already at least close to the end of the runway - I'll have to do it eventually in order to have a complete archive. Jon -- Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron R page: http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/ __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help --- On Tue 12/16, Jonathan Baron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Jonathan Baron [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 10:31:32 -0500 Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up On 12/16/03 16:09, Pascal A. Niklaus wrote:br- In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the Rbrlanguage* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time somebrmembers of the R core team spend answering relatively basic questions,brand by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I cannot see muchbrneed for a new R mailing list. There are these excellent mailing listbrarchives, so why fragment this list?brbrYikes! I now realize that my initial support of the idea for thebrlist must be qualified considerably. If this list is started,brits archives become quite important. Who will do that? And willbrI have the time/energy/inclination to incorporate it into my ownbrsearch database? I'd rather not have one more thing to do. Butbrif the list gets off the ground - and it seems already at leastbrclose to the end of the runway - I'll have to do it eventually inbrorder to have a complete archive.brbrJonbr! -- brJonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of PennsylvaniabrHome page:http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baronbrR page: http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/brbr__br[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing listbrhttps://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-helpbr __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
Hello, I agree completely that well thought out questions are important to receive good and quick replies and I agree as well that the replies on the R-help list are very good and helpful. But I had to learn and I am still learing how to write good questions and appreciate Spencer's explanantion how a good question should look like in his opinion. I am not sure how this new mailing list might evolve. It might be that the R-beginner list takes some load of the R-help list by reducing the amount of basic questions which won't be questioned anymore here (what aren't many) and that new user might be taught to post good question before they start posting to R-help. If it proves to be ineffective or might affect R-help in some unwanted manner it would be an easy one to shut it down. I doubt that it will split the R-help list - in my opinion it is unlikely that medium/experienced R user who will subscribe to R-beginner will unsubscribe from the R-help list. Moreover people starting with R are less likely to send any mails to this list, some do and are refered in most cases to the manuals. When I started R I looked through the archive and because I did not understand even one question, I was intimidated by this list and did not send any mail until a few weeks later (that was not because of the statistics but the commands) For this kind of people the R-beginner list is thought - to encourage them to send stupid questions during their first steps in R. They shall recognize questions they would have asked themselves. Therefore I think that the quality of the question is in this case less important than it's level. I hope I did not misunderstood some points ,-) best regards Martin On Tuesday 16 December 2003 17:20, Spencer Graves wrote: I agree with Tony's observation that well thought out questions are more likely to receive an answer than something that is long, rambling, and poorly focused. Many questions take more time to read than I have available, so I don't bother. I like questions that include toy examples in a few lines of code that I can copy from an email into R and test ideas. Careful formatting that looks pretty in an email is an obstacle for me, because it increases the work required to get it into R. Many questioners could answer their own problems in the process of generating such a toy example. When they can't, that exercise helps them focus the question, which makes it easier for potential respondents to understand the problem and reply. Without that, I must either generate a toy example myself (which I've done many times) or respond with untested code and risk looking stupid when my untested suggestion doesn't work. hope this helps. spencer graves A.J. Rossini wrote: Pascal A. Niklaus [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: - In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the R language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time some members of the R core team spend answering relatively basic questions, and by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There are these excellent mailing list archives, so why fragment this list? To follow up, well-thought through basic questions do get answered; in particular, they can be useful for those of us writing packages, documentation, etc. I have a sense that it is the quality of the question (details of what is intended to do, or not known, signs of using other sources of materials which folks have spent years on, no signs that this is a do my work for me question) rather than the level of the question, that is an issue. best, -tony __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
My experience in several mailing lists and newsgroups has been that help from other beginners very often deserves the scare quotes. The advice is often extremely bad. The situation for R is quite different: R has the best documentation I've ever seen for any open-source package, and it's better than most commercial software I've had to deal with. The R web site has pointers to some really excellent stuff. For example, while S Poetry is about S rather than R, a lot of programming questions about R have clear explanations in that book. There are several tutorials, and the ones I looked at were good. There are a few things about using R with a particular operating system or window manager that are best shown in person. But apart from that, I'm wondering what kind of beginner questions there might be that beginners would be able to help with that aren't already in the tutorials c. A beginner who can say I have read this, that, and the other and tried the on-line help, and I didn't recognise the answer to my problem is likely to get prompt and accurate help in this mailing list. The books I've relied on for actually doing statistics have mainly been Statistical Models in S and Modern Applied Statistics with S, and again, they really do answer a lot of questions. Hmm. I seem to have argued myself into the position that IF the rule in the beginner list were that anyone purporting to answer a question should justify the answer by citing the relevant R documentation or one of the commonly mentioned books about S and R, THEN it could be as educational for the answerer as for the questioner and quite helpful after all. __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
My personal view on this is that there is need for a friendly list with a more customer service attitude than r-help. r-help is really very useful but its also intimidating and I bet lots of people have questions that they never ask for fear of the response. Maybe some of them even decide not to learn R. --- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 00:49:15 +0100 From: Martin Wegmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Spencer Graves [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up Hello, I agree completely that well thought out questions are important to receive good and quick replies and I agree as well that the replies on the R-help list are very good and helpful. But I had to learn and I am still learing how to write good questions and appreciate Spencer's explanantion how a good question should look like in his opinion. I am not sure how this new mailing list might evolve. It might be that the R-beginner list takes some load of the R-help list by reducing the amount of basic questions which won't be questioned anymore here (what aren't many) and that new user might be taught to post good question before they start posting to R-help. If it proves to be ineffective or might affect R-help in some unwanted manner it would be an easy one to shut it down. I doubt that it will split the R-help list - in my opinion it is unlikely that medium/experienced R user who will subscribe to R-beginner will unsubscribe from the R-help list. Moreover people starting with R are less likely to send any mails to this list, some do and are refered in most cases to the manuals. When I started R I looked through the archive and because I did not understand even one question, I was intimidated by this list and did not send any mail until a few weeks later (that was not because of the statistics but the commands) For this kind of people the R-beginner list is thought - to encourage them to send stupid questions during their first steps in R. They shall recognize questions they would have asked themselves. Therefore I think that the quality of the question is in this case less important than it's level. I hope I did not misunderstood some points ,-) best regards Martin On Tuesday 16 December 2003 17:20, Spencer Graves wrote: I agree with Tony's observation that well thought out questions are more likely to receive an answer than something that is long, rambling, and poorly focused. Many questions take more time to read than I have available, so I don't bother. I like questions that include toy examples in a few lines of code that I can copy from an email into R and test ideas. Careful formatting that looks pretty in an email is an obstacle for me, because it increases the work required to get it into R. Many questioners could answer their own problems in the process of generating such a toy example. When they can't, that exercise helps them focus the question, which makes it easier for potential respondents to understand the problem and reply. Without that, I must either generate a toy example myself (which I've done many times) or respond with untested code and risk looking stupid when my untested suggestion doesn't work. hope this helps. spencer graves A.J. Rossini wrote: Pascal A. Niklaus [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: - In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the R language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time some members of the R core team spend answering relatively basic questions, and by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There are these excellent mailing list archives, so why fragment this list? To follow up, well-thought through basic questions do get answered; in particular, they can be useful for those of us writing packages, documentation, etc. I have a sense that it is the quality of the question (details of what is intended to do, or not known, signs of using other sources of materials which folks have spent years on, no signs that this is a do my work for me question) rather than the level of the question, that is an issue. best, -tony __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up
There are always people on lists whose email manner leaves a great deal to be desired. I tend to think, however, that it's a small price to pay for excellent, free software and fast, expert advice. Anyway, there's no guarantee that a beginner's list would be any more friendly than the main list, particularly if it is staffed by volunteers. Regards, Andrew C. Ward CAPE Centre Department of Chemical Engineering The University of Queensland Brisbane Qld 4072 Australia Quoting Gabor Grothendieck [EMAIL PROTECTED]: My personal view on this is that there is need for a friendly list with a more customer service attitude than r-help. r-help is really very useful but its also intimidating and I bet lots of people have questions that they never ask for fear of the response. Maybe some of them even decide not to learn R. --- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 00:49:15 +0100 From: Martin Wegmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Spencer Graves [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up Hello, I agree completely that well thought out questions are important to receive good and quick replies and I agree as well that the replies on the R-help list are very good and helpful. But I had to learn and I am still learing how to write good questions and appreciate Spencer's explanantion how a good question should look like in his opinion. I am not sure how this new mailing list might evolve. It might be that the R-beginner list takes some load of the R-help list by reducing the amount of basic questions which won't be questioned anymore here (what aren't many) and that new user might be taught to post good question before they start posting to R-help. If it proves to be ineffective or might affect R-help in some unwanted manner it would be an easy one to shut it down. I doubt that it will split the R-help list - in my opinion it is unlikely that medium/experienced R user who will subscribe to R-beginner will unsubscribe from the R-help list. Moreover people starting with R are less likely to send any mails to this list, some do and are refered in most cases to the manuals. When I started R I looked through the archive and because I did not understand even one question, I was intimidated by this list and did not send any mail until a few weeks later (that was not because of the statistics but the commands) For this kind of people the R-beginner list is thought - to encourage them to send stupid questions during their first steps in R. They shall recognize questions they would have asked themselves. Therefore I think that the quality of the question is in this case less important than it's level. I hope I did not misunderstood some points ,-) best regards Martin On Tuesday 16 December 2003 17:20, Spencer Graves wrote: I agree with Tony's observation that well thought out questions are more likely to receive an answer than something that is long, rambling, and poorly focused. Many questions take more time to read than I have available, so I don't bother. I like questions that include toy examples in a few lines of code that I can copy from an email into R and test ideas. Careful formatting that looks pretty in an email is an obstacle for me, because it increases the work required to get it into R. Many questioners could answer their own problems in the process of generating such a toy example. When they can't, that exercise helps them focus the question, which makes it easier for potential respondents to understand the problem and reply. Without that, I must either generate a toy example myself (which I've done many times) or respond with untested code and risk looking stupid when my untested suggestion doesn't work. hope this helps. spencer graves A.J. Rossini wrote: Pascal A. Niklaus [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: - In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the R language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time some members of the R core team spend answering relatively basic questions, and by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There are these excellent mailing list archives, so why fragment this list? To follow up, well-thought through basic questions do get answered; in particular, they can be useful for those of us writing packages, documentation, etc. I have a sense that it is the quality of the question (details of what is intended to do, or not known, signs of using other sources of materials which folks have spent years on, no signs that this is a do my work for me question) rather than the level of the question, that is an issue. best, -tony __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https
