Dear colleagues. I largely agree with Brian & would perhaps make the very modest suggestion that if the title of your course doesn't include the word "phylogenetic," "phylogeny," or variants thereof -- and maybe even if the course description does not include the analysis of phylogenies in R -- your course advertisement is probably not appropriate for this list?
Best wishes, Liam Liam J. Revell Professor of Biology, University of Massachusetts Boston Web: http://faculty.umb.edu/liam.revell/ Book: Phylogenetic Comparative Methods in R <https://press.princeton.edu/books/phylogenetic-comparative-methods-in-r> (/Princeton University Press/, 2022) On 7/29/2025 7:18 AM, Brian O'Meara wrote: > CAUTION: EXTERNAL SENDER > > R-sig-phylo was once a place to discuss phylogenetics in R. > > It�s now a place to get ads from Physalia, PR Statistics, Transmitting > Science, and Instats about courses and seminars they are offering (most paid, > though not all). Some of the ads are relevant for using R in phylogenetics; > many are not. But the listserv is now over 78% ads from these four > organizations (more stats athttps://brianomeara.info/posts/rsig/); only 4% of > the most recent threads were about actual questions on using R for > phylogenetics. It�s even worse in other listservs; in June, 2025, ALL 28 > threads in the r-sig-ecology listserv were announcements of this sort > (https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-ecology/2025-June/thread.html), so this > is definitely a strategy these organizations have chosen to adopt. > > There IS interest and value in a lot of the advertised courses, but it�s a > different interest � in the same way R in finance could be important but only > marginally overlaps with phylogenetics, so it would not be great if the vast > majority of r-sig-phylo posts were about day trading. Perhaps it is time for > these organizations to create an r-sig-courses or similar listserv, or use > one of the many tools available for running a mailing list dedicated to > potential customers of their organizations. > > We�re living in an era where a lot of online forums are potentially going to > be full of AI-generated inauthentic comments; a working email forum could be > valuable as a place for humans to talk to other humans, as this one has been > in the past. That�s not going to be possible if people flee because it is now > used as a marketing list. > > Hilmar Lapp, our very long-serving, volunteer, list moderator, posted > something similar months ago > (https://www.mail-archive.com/r-sig-phylo@r-project.org/msg06067.html ) with > some generous guidelines that allow some posting (most of the orgs have still > posted in excess of this). Like him, I do see cases where a course posting > could be relevant, so I�m reluctant to say we should ban all course > announcements, but I think it could be worth having a rule like this at this > point. Though maybe the organizations involved could try to listen to a plea > from the community and choose to stop instead of putting yet more work on our > mod. > > Thanks, > Brian > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > > _______________________________________________ > R-sig-phylo mailing list -R-sig-phylo@r-project.org > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-phylo > Searchable archive athttp://www.mail-archive.com/r-sig-phylo@r-project.org/ [[alternative HTML version deleted]] _______________________________________________ R-sig-phylo mailing list - R-sig-phylo@r-project.org https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-phylo Searchable archive at http://www.mail-archive.com/r-sig-phylo@r-project.org/
