[R] possible spam alert

[Peter Dalgaard]

Kimpel, Mark William wrote:
> The last two times I have originated message threads on R or
> Bioconductor I have received the message included below from someone
> named Patrick Connolly. Both times I was the originator of the message
> thread and used what I thought was a unique subject line that explained
> as best I could what my question was. Patrick seems to be implying that
> I am abusing the R and BioC help newsgroups in this fashion. 
>
> When I emailed him to give me a specific example, he did not reply. The
> most recent thread that he seems concerned about was to the R list and
> was entitled "regexpr and parsing question" . I believe the previous
> post of mine that he had problems with was to the BioC list but I can't
> remember its subject.
>
> Is this spam?
>   
No. Breach of netiquette, yes.

The message in question starts a new thread, yet contains an 
In-Reply-To: header line, which presumably means that you started 
writing the message as a reply to something completely unrelated, 
specifically: "Re: [R] change plotting symbol for groups in trellis 
graph". You should not do that, unless you know how to remove the 
In-Reply-To line (and this is not obvious in many mail clients); 
changing the subject is not sufficient.
> If I am doing this correctly, you should see the subject "possible spam
> alert" in the subject header of THIS message.
>
> Would the moderators of the lists please check and see if I am doing
> some wrong and, if not, inform Mr. Connolly that I am not. If others
> have received this message in error, it is possible it is spam and users
> should be alerted.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mark
>
> Mark W. Kimpel MD 
>
>  
>
>  
>
> Official Business Address:
>
>  
>
> Department of Psychiatry
>
> Indiana University School of Medicine
>
> PR M116
>
> Institute of Psychiatric Research
>
> 791 Union Drive
>
> Indianapolis, IN 46202
>
>  
> This is a request to anyone who starts a new subject to begin with a new
> message and NOT reply to an existing one.  If your mail client is any
> good, it's very simple to set up an alias (mine is simply 'r') so that
> the tedious task of typing 'r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch' is unnecessary and
> it's quicker than scrolling through an address book.
> It's also quicker than deleting the previous subject.
>
> Most mornings, I have over a screenful of messages mostly from R-help
> and it's very useful to have them threaded.  However, the usefulness of
> threading is lost when posters reply to a message and then change the
> subject instead of creating a new message.
>
> People who don't have a mail client that can display email in threads
> are probably unaware that this sort of thing can happen in ones that do:
>
>
>     37 N   25 Jan Luis Silva              ( 34) [R] plot/screen
>     38 N   25 Jan Uwe Ligges              ( 55) `-> 
>     39 N   25 Jan Fernando Henrique Ferra ( 20) [R] Plotting coloured
> histograms
> ->  40 N   26 Jan Mohamed A. Kerasha      ( 12) |->[R] Distributions.
>     41 N   26 Jan ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk   ( 26) | |->
>     42     26 Jan Qin Xin                 (  9) | `->[R] how could I add
> legends
>     43     27 Jan Ko-Kang Kevin Wang      ( 31) |   `->
>     44 N   26 Jan Remigijus Lapinskas     ( 32) |->Re: [R] Plotting
> coloured his
>     45 N   26 Jan Damon Wischik           (125) `-> 
>     46 N   25 Jan Rex_Bryan at urscorp.com   ( 10) [R] plotting primatives,
> ellipse
>     47 N   25 Jan Uwe Ligges              ( 19) `->   
>
>
> As Martin Maechler explained some time ago, it also screws up the
> archives for a similar reason.
>
> Your cooperation will be greatly appreciated.
>
> best
>
>