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