Dear R-help list members,
The first message to the R-help email list was posted by Ross Ihaka 25
years ago, on April 1, 1997!
On this 25th anniversary of R-help, the official description of the list
and the rules for posting to it have been modified. The general object
of these changes is to broaden the topics that are legitimately
discussed on the R-help list, partly to reflect how the list actually is
used.
The description of the list at <https://www.r-project.org/mail.html> now
reads:
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The ?main? R mailing list, for discussion about problems and solutions
encountered using R, including using R packages in the standard R
distribution and on CRAN; announcements (not covered by R-announce or
R-packages); the availability of new functionality for R and
documentation of R; and for posting nice examples and benchmarks.
This is quite an active list with many messages per day. An alternative
is to subscribe and choose daily digests (in plain or MIME format). Use
the web interface for information, subscription, archives, etc.
Please read the posting guide before sending a message to the list. In
particular, if asking for help with a problem, it is important to be
clear and concrete, and it is almost always advisable to send a minimal
reproducible example of the problem.
There are many more specific R email lists (see below under ?Special
Interest Groups?). If a problem is appropriate for one of the more
specific lists, you are usually more likely to get help by posting to
the more specific list. For example, a problem specific to R under macOS
should normally be posted to the R-SIG-Mac list, and a problem
concerning R software for mixed-effects models should normally be posted
to the R-SIG-mixed-models list.
R-help is not intended for help with homework or basic-statistics questions.
Bugs in contributed CRAN packages should normally be reported directly
to the package maintainer (enter the command
maintainer("package-name")). You may also be able to obtain help with
a
problem from the package maintainer.
Help with R problems is available from a number of sources beyond the R
email lists. See under ?Help? at the R home page.
------------ snip --------------
We have also modified the brief description of the R-help list in the
posting guide at <https://www.r-project.org/posting-guide.html> and
(eventually) in the R FAQ.
Best,
John Fox
For the R Foundation
--
John Fox, Professor Emeritus
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontarion, Canada
web: https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/jfox/