A ridiculous number of answers to a fairly trivial query on R-news
lately - 13 messages on the archive so far telling how to do
paste(c("Bob","loves","Sally"),collapse="
").
I think a lot of this is due to the increased latency because of
network and mailer problems that Martin mentioned earlier, but there's
an inherent latency in mailing lists that means any trivial query is in
danger of being swamped by a dozen identical responses.
There are very low-latency options - web-based forums. Some people
object to them since it requires them to visit a site to check for new
messages, rather than have them appear in their mailboxes. Well, some
systems can email you new messages or new thread-starters. The important
thing is that any response is up instantly such that there's no need for
a dozen identical responses.
Mailing lists are fine for low-level, low-interactivity information
transfer, but R-help isn't that anymore.
Is there any interest in this from R-core or anyone around R-core
(R-mantle??)? Please email me if you have any desire to see something
like this, or if you can supply any resources to get something going. I
may be able to requisition a stray server from somewhere to get
something going.
Barry Rowlingson
Maths and Stats
Lancaster University
Lancaster, UK
