[R] R-help mailing list activity

[Jean-Luc Dupouey]

Dear members,

Not a technical question:

The number of threads in this mailing list, following a long period of 
increase, has been regularly and strongly decreasing since 2010, passing 
from more than 40K threads to less than 11K threads last year. The trend 
is similar for most of the "ancient" mailing lists of the R-project. I 
cannot imagine the total number of R-related inquiries on the Internet 
decreased. It means that contributors have gone elsewhere. Indeed, in 
the meantime, the number of R posts on stackoverflow passed from 2K to 
100K between 2009 and 2015. Thus my question: what are the 
specificities, the plus and minus of the R-project mailing lists, in 
comparison with other lists, and especially in comparison with 
stackoverflow? A lot of threads are duplicated on both lists, which 
seems to me a little bit counterproductive.

I hope it is the wright place to ask this question. Thanks in advance,

Jean-Luc Dupouey