I've sometimes thought it would be useful to have another mail list called "no I haven't read the documentation but someone can save me a lot of time," or perhaps just "newbie" for short. This can be very useful for people just getting started in R and with school starting soon I expect the help list may become overwhelmed. Of course, I think that people should read all the documentation, but it can still be a very difficult to get a quick answer to very simple questions. I would suggest that this be advertised as a list where new users can help one another and the experts monitoring the help list are (probably) not listening. Thus simple/obvious/documented things can be asked without fear of being (justifiably) chastised for not reading the documentation. A chat room may be a better mechanism, but a mail list can be added fairly simply. Paul Gilbert -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Paul Gilbert <pgilbert at bank-banque-canada.ca> writes:> I've sometimes thought it would be useful to have another mail list > called "no I haven't read the documentation but someone can save me a > lot of time," or perhaps just "newbie" for short. This can be very > useful for people just getting started in R and with school starting > soon I expect the help list may become overwhelmed. Of course, I think > that people should read all the documentation, but it can still be a > very difficult to get a quick answer to very simple questions. > > I would suggest that this be advertised as a list where new users can > help one another and the experts monitoring the help list are (probably) > not listening. Thus simple/obvious/documented things can be asked > without fear of being (justifiably) chastised for not reading the > documentation. A chat room may be a better mechanism, but a mail list > can be added fairly simply.Although I appreciate the thought, I see some problems with what you suggest. In caricature, we could end up with newbies rewriting the documentation for each other ... incorrectly! Most of the time where people get referred to the documentation it is actually because there is no simple answer, or (at times) no easy way to lead people onto the fact that computer languages have rules... I don't know about what other people do, but I set up mail filtering rules that send all R-help traffic to a separate folder, so that I can fairly easily skim it when I have time. Apart from that, I try not to answer every newbie question but let the semi-experienced group (which must be growing quite large by now) try their hand first. One thing that has crossed my mind more than a few times is that the Tcl crowd use something called a Wiki which is a sort of multiauthor document (http://mini.net/tcl/) and I've been wondering whether we might have something similar for R. This structure might be useful at the development level as well. Not that I don't have other things to do... (A better search mechanism for the mailing list archives might also be a good idea.) -- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3 c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Although I initially liked the idea of reducing the burden on the core team (however willingly they bear it) by having a separate list for newbies, I now think, after reading some of this discussion, that we have two other ways of serving the needs described. One is the contributed documentaion section of CRAN, which contains many documents (including mine, but many others too) with the kinds of examples that might be helpful to newbies. The other is that people can start local and specialized groups. For example, it makes sense for university courses that use R to have their own email lists, and for groups of researchers with special interests to form similar groups, perhaps locally within a single institution, or perhaps more broadly. Have such things happened with SPlus? I suspect not, but R is different because, in the long run, more students will get it (because they can afford it), so (I hope) there will be more newbies than SPlus ever had. On the other hand, if these are not enough, and if a newbie list were started, I would happily read it and try to contribute, thinking of myself as an intermediate user who can solve most newbie problems but not most of the problems now on this list. -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
The replies have paid fairly little attention to the point P. Dalgaard put in parentehsis; currently searching the help archive is quite useless. I think most of the 'newbies' and also others are used to search for mailing lists with the help of e.g. dejanews and find easily answers to questions that have already been handled on the help list. R-help lacks this at the moment. This would at least remov ethe repetition of the 'obvious'?questions form the list. Regards, Kari ---------------------------------------------- Kari Ruohonen Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute Socioeconomic and Aquaculture Research Turku Game and Fisheries Research It?inen Pitk?katu 3, 20520 Turku, Finland tel. +358-20-5751681, +358-40-5238321 (mobile) fax +358-20-5751689 http://www.rktl.fi -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
On Wed, 29 Aug 2001, Jonathan Baron wrote: ...> Have such things happened with SPlus? I suspect not, but R is > different because, in the long run, more students will get it > (because they can afford it), so (I hope) there will be more > newbies than SPlus ever had.Not that I know of, and there are large student communities out there for S-PLUS. (Ours can certainly afford it under current licencing models: it costs them the same as R.) One difference is that students are only likely to be using S-PLUS with institutional blessing and hence support. -- Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272860 (secr) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
In my view a 'Newbie Mailinglist' would be good idea. So students and other newbies could ask questions which they normally would not ask. But a better idea would be to generate a newsgroup because of several reasons: -) you can easily search the archives -) the discussion is faster (I experience that the R-mailinglist has a lag of about 1 to 2 hours (not for everyone!!!). When I ask a question, I get a rather quick response by direct mail, but I recieve my own question and the answers about 1 to 2 hours later). Hence it is not possible for all to participate in a discussion. -) a newsgroup allows you to order the messages in threads, so you can easily follow the discussion. Thomas -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._