[R] Comment delay time (was: acos(0.5) == pi/3 FALSE)

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 9/20/2006 11:54 AM, Charles C. Berry wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Sep 2006, Johannes H�sing wrote:
> 
>> Peter Dalgaard:
>>> Ben Bolker <bolker at zoo.ufl.edu> writes:
>>>>          1. compose your response
>>> I've always wondered why step 1. - often the time-consuming bit - is not
>>> listed last.
>>
>> The advice applies to the situation when answering immediately would be
>> your knee-jerk reaction. It is assumed that actually composing and sending
>> the mail would take very little time and thought, whereas coming around to
>> answering it after runif(1)*4 hours would take considerably more time, even
>> when mulitiplied with the probability that you are still the first one.
>>
>> Looking at the submission times of questions and answers in this
>> particular case, though, I would be upset if the helpful guys actually
>> used this algorithm. Most of the answers were submitted after 3.5 to 4 h
>> time, thus revealing a possible flaw of the random number generator
>> underlying runif().
> 
> Johannes,
> 
> Turn on 'full-headers' in your email reader.
> 
> Most of the replies were submitted within 20 minutes of the posting of the 
> original query by the list-serv (to me and I assume to others) and several 
> that said essentially the same thing were posted within the first 10 
> minutes, I recall.
> 
> The list-serv held the initial email for a couple of hours before passing 
> it on. The replies are processed more rapidly, being held at most a few 
> minutes each.
> 
> Given the initial hold placed on that email, runif(1)*4 hours would have 
> increased the overall response time (from time of initial posting to time 
> of first response) by less than 25% (with high probability). And would 
> have saved several respondents from having to type up their replies.
> 
> In this case even runif(1)*20 minutes would likely have cut the response 
> traffic to one or two and would have increased the overall response time 
> by less than 10 minutes.
> 

Perhaps the list server should have a configurable user-specific random 
delay time before posting a new thread.  Users who don't want to risk 
wasting time on duplicate postings could ask not to see new threads 
until a random delay has passed.  Followups to the threads that arrived 
during this waiting period would all be sent at once, so if you see a 
message doesn't have responses, you know it's safe to write one.

Duncan Murdoch