On Wed, 1 Dec 2004, Robert Brown FM CEFAS wrote:
I have been following the discussions on 'Reasons not to answer very basic questions in a straightforward way' with interest as someone who is also new to R and has had similar experiences. As such it with sadness that I note that most seem to agree with the present approach to the responses to basic questions.
I think the term "basic questions" in this thread is unfortunate. Many of the questions at issue are actually quite complex and advanced, but are asked very frequently.
If someone says they have read, to pick a frequent example over the past few days, FAQ 7.21, and doesn't understand it or can't work out how to apply the advice, they are likely to get a friendly and detailed answer. I wrote that FAQ answer and I know that it doesn't contain everything you might possibly need to know. On the other hand, if someone doesn't appear to have read the FAQ, I will respond "See the FAQ" or (if I remember the number "See FAQ 7.21"). Other people may respond more forcefully; they are usually people who spend more time than I do on answering questions.
If someone says they can't understand a particular section of "An Introduction to R", again, they will get a much more friendly response than if they don't appear to have even looked at it. I learned S-PLUS from an earlier version of that document (as a MSc student with no statistical qualifications at all), and while it is helpful, it could certainly be expanded.
Incidentally, the suggestion elsewhere in this thread that the R community should decide whether it wants new users seems to reflect a complete misunderstanding of the situation. The "R community" has no decision-making procedure and a hugely diverse range of views on almost every topic (except perhaps the relative usefulness of SPSS and R). It can't decide anything and probably couldn't agree if it tried to.
My personal view is that a separate mailing list for low-level questions would probably not be useful (this issue has been raised before), but I am not stopping anyone from setting one up, and I'm sure that if one were started the CRAN maintainers would be willing to post information about subscribing, link to archives, etc. The list doesn't have to be hosted by Martin Maechler and ETH Zurich just because r-devel and r-help are.
-thomas
______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
