[R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up

[Spencer Graves]

      I agree with Tony's observation that well thought out questions 
are more likely to receive an answer than something that is long, 
rambling, and poorly focused.  Many questions take more time to read 
than I have available, so I don't bother.  I like questions that include 
toy examples in a few lines of code that I can copy from an email into R 
and test ideas.  Careful formatting that looks pretty in an email is an 
obstacle for me, because it increases the work required to get it into 
R.  Many questioners could answer their own problems in the process of 
generating such a toy example.  When they can't, that exercise helps 
them focus the question, which makes it easier for potential respondents 
to understand the problem and reply.  Without that, I must either 
generate a toy example myself (which I've done many times) or respond 
with untested code and risk looking stupid when my untested suggestion 
doesn't work. 

      hope this helps. 
      spencer graves

A.J. Rossini wrote:

>"Pascal A. Niklaus" <Pascal.Niklaus at unibas.ch> writes:
>
>  
>
>>- In my experience even *very* basic questions *relating to the R
>>language* do get answered on r-help. I'm impressed by how much time
>>some members of the R core team spend answering relatively basic
>>questions, and by how elaborate their answers generally are. So I
>>cannot see much need for a new R mailing list. There are these
>>excellent mailing list archives, so why "fragment" this list?
>>    
>>
>
>To follow up, well-thought through basic questions do get answered; in
>particular, they can be useful for those of us writing packages,
>documentation, etc.  
>
>I have a sense that it is the quality of the question (details of what
>is intended to do, or not known, signs of using other sources of
>materials which folks have spent years on, no signs that this is a "do
>my work for me" question) rather than the level of the question, that
>is an issue.
>
>best,
>-tony
>
>  
>