[R] Should there be an R-beginners list?

Duncan Murdoch murdoch.duncan at gmail.com
Sun Nov 24 22:36:35 CET 2013


On 13-11-24 4:13 PM, Yihui Xie wrote:
> I do not see how it can be illegal to download and duplicate the
> posts, since all the content is licensed under CC BY-SA. I might have
> missed something there: http://stackexchange.com/legal If that is
> really the case, I think I will have to reconsider if I should use it
> any more.

I'm not a lawyer, but I see claims restricting users to "personal use".

Duncan Murdoch

>
> Regards,
> Yihui
> --
> Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com>
> Web: http://yihui.name
> Department of Statistics, Iowa State University
> 2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Duncan Murdoch
> <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 13-11-24 2:04 PM, Yihui Xie wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm not aware of a discussion on this, but I would say no.
>>> Fragmentation is bad. Further fragmentation is worse.
>>>
>>> TL;DR
>>> =====
>>>
>>> Actually I'd say all mailing lists except r-devel should be moving to
>>> StackOverlow in the future (disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with it).
>>
>>
>> I would generally agree with you, except for a few points.
>>
>> 1.  I avoid StackOverflow, because they claim copyright on the compilation.
>> As I read their terms of service, it would be illegal for anyone to download
>> and duplicate all postings about R.  So a posting there is only available as
>> long as they choose to make it available. Postings to the mailing list are
>> archived in several places.
>>
>> 2.  I think an interface like StackOverflow is better than the mailing list
>> interface, and will eventually win out.  R-help needs to do nothing, once
>> someone puts together something like StackOverflow that attracts most of the
>> people who give good answers, R-help will just fade away.
>>
>> Duncan Murdoch



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