Skip to content

Web based R-help not a list

14 messages · Sean Robert McGuffee, David Winsemius, Jeff Newmiller +9 more

Sean Robert McGuffee
#
On 11/9/11 7:22 PM, "David Winsemius" <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
I'm not sure if this response answers the question. It seems to me that
there is not an option to ask for help in R and get the answers to your
questions interactively on a webpage without involving your email address.
Unfortunately, I see this a lot with many computer based help/communities.
What I sometimes do to cope is make a separate email address with google
where I just add ".whatever" to the username part and subscribe with it.
Then I bother to make a different user on my computer so I don't have to
login and out of google on firefox to check it. It seems to me that this is
bending over backwards instead of a more obvious solution, but it's the only
solution I have found because the people who have helped me the most on this
site don't seem to be any different than myself in terms of them being users
like you and me without some sort of resource or credential or interest in
making the more obviously useful help webpage that your email speaks clearly
to me about. I mean, I write that email in my head every time I have a
question in R and I think this is a very legitimate question.

            

      
      
      
    

        
This seems to be an offensive comment from one of the "Asperger's"
people that the posting guide refers to. Your question is a good one. I
think what R has going for it is that it is really convenient and that there
are often very quick and easy answers if you can get to them. The idea that
you should have to do extra work to answer simple questions is ludicrous,
and what's worse about the current system is that you also have to be
exposed to people's negative attitudes such as the one just displayed.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen any progress. All I can say is that if you can
learn to ignore the emotional tolls that people like this charge, they can
be helpful. I don't think we can ever teach them about the consequences of
their actions though because they don't have the part of their brain that
can experience the bad end of it that we go through when dealing with it.

            

      
      
      
    

        
I wish you had decided this prior to your post, and I hope you get help
for your mental problems.

            

      
      
      
    

        
It would bother me.

    I'm not sure if this response answers the question. I think it's
sometimes best in the current world just to make a separate email address
and account for computer related help in general. How ironic! I know!

            

      
      
      
    

        
Some of us in the "we" do agree with you. I sometimes wonder if many
people on this list aren't familiar with some well done forum web pages. I
cite a c++ help page as an example of an extremely well done help and forum
webpage:
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/
    On that page, there are few simple categories of help:
Beginners, Windows Programming, UNIX/Linux Programming,
General C++ Programming, Lounge, Jobs. There, too, all of the questions in
this email are addressed with answers I approve of. For example, after you
login, you can simply search for your question. Many times you find the
answer and are done. If not, you can write a nicely formatted question and
chose to subscribe to answers or not to just that question. It's ideal and
it's what almost all of us who use computers in 2011 expect from awesome
programs such as R. I imagine someone in this list could copy and modify
that page very easily, but I don't know. Anyway, I would hope that if anyone
on this list can do it, it would be a huge contribution to our world if they
would. That's my two cents.

            

      
      
      
    

        
I say, thank you for your awesome email! I agree completely!

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      David Winsemius
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On Nov 9, 2011, at 5:38 PM, Cem Girit wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
There is Nabble. It's not going to make you any friends unless you  
learn to post in plain text AND to include context  ... too often not  
done by Nabble users. Gmane is also a possible website that can mirror  
rhelp.

            

      
      
      
    

        
Yes, several. Have you read the information page and the posting guide  
yet?

            

      
      
      
    

        
Yes. You were offered an option to get a digest when you signed up.

            

      
      
      
    

        
Most people reply to both the poster and the the list, but there is no  
enforcement mechanism. Your unwillingness to do any extra work to  
educate yourself is duly noted. Speaking only for myself, I will NOT  
respond to any of your further posts because of your demonstrated  
privileged attitude. It would not bother me if other regular readers  
followed my example.

            

      
      
      
    

        
We do not agree that HTML is a better format. You are welcome to take  
your questions elsewhere if plain text is not acceptable.

            

      
      
      
    

        
.pdf and .txt files are acceptable attachments.

            

      
      
      
    

        
I say again:  You are welcome to take your questions elsewhere if  
plain text is not acceptable.

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Jeff Newmiller
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Such a resource would no longer be R-help. You might like stackoverflow.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Newmiller                        The     .....       .....  Go Live...
DCN:<jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us>        Basics: ##.#.       ##.#.  Live Go...
                                      Live:   OO#.. Dead: OO#..  Playing
Research Engineer (Solar/Batteries            O.O#.       #.O#.  with
/Software/Embedded Controllers)               .OO#.       .OO#.  rocks...1k
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

        
Cem Girit <girit at biopticon.com> wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Clint Bowman
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Cem,

Thanks for your comments.

1.  <http://cran.r-project.org/> and select Search in the left-hand 
panel.

2.  Use a filter to funnel r-help into it's own area and review as 
desired.

3.  I find that there are many posts that have been quite 
educational and have helped me with analyses.

4.  Although HTML produces pretty posts many of us don't find that 
the information content is increased.

5.  Yes, a picture is often worth 1K words and I'll agree there are 
times when they are needed.  However, mailbox size (a picture is 
often 10K words or more) may be more important than number of 
messages.  Reproducible code usually is sufficient to demonstrate 
the problem.

Clint

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Hasan Diwan
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On 9 November 2011 15:24, Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Perhaps our man was looking for a searchable mail archive? If no one
has one, I can set one up pretty quickly. Just let me know... Thanks
in advance! -- H

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Marc Schwartz
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On Nov 9, 2011, at 5:40 PM, Hasan Diwan wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
No need:

?RSiteSearch

http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/

http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/nmz.html

http://www.mail-archive.com/r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch/

http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.general

http://www.rseek.org/


HTH,

Marc Schwartz

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Duncan Murdoch
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On 11-11-09 6:03 PM, Sean Robert McGuffee wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
You didn't read the other answers in the thread:  Jeff Newmiller pointed 
out stackoverflow.

But more generally:  if there weren't such a resource, it would be 
better to create one than to just complain that it doesn't exist.  R is 
a community effort.  If something is needed you should contribute it, or 
contribute resources towards it.

Duncan Murdoch

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      PIKAL Petr
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

          

      
      
      
    

        
<snip>

            

      
      
      
    

        
that

            

      
      
      
    

        
address.

            

      
      
      
    

        
help/communities.

            

      
      
      
    

        
is

            

      
      
      
    

        
only

            

      
      
      
    

        
this

            

      
      
      
    

        
users

            

      
      
      
    

        
in

            

      
      
      
    

        
clearly

            

      
      
      
    

        
there

            

      
      
      
    

        
that

            

      
      
      
    

        
ludicrous,

There are really many possibilities to find answers. Some of them were 
shown in earlier posts. I work with R maybe more than 10 years and I still 
first try to search an answer by CRAN search options and use R-help only 
as a last resort. I sometimes manage to answer questions of others and 
more than often I just consult help page and recite part of it to the 
poster.

            

      
      
      
    

        
can

I admit I do not know other help system than MS Windows and some other 
commercial programs. R seems to me far better because if you really are 
willing to learn it is extremely helpful to read answers from others. I 
sometimes check an answer to other question just because I want to see 
what is going on. And some answers are worth saving as they can be 
extremely helpful for further work.

Regards
Petr

            

      
      
      
    

        
can

            

      
      
      
    

        
of

<snip>

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

        
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html

        

      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        
      

    

    

      
      

        
      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Barry Rowlingson
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 7:32 PM, Cem Girit <girit at biopticon.com> wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
I think you misunderstood the mention of 'Stackoverflow'. This is a
solution, not a problem!

 StackOverflow (www.stackoverflow.com) is a question-and-answer
website for programmers questions, part of the 'Stack Exchange'
network of Q&A sites. Questions on R programming are often asked
there, and live quite happily amongst the C, Python, Java etc
questions.

 Questions (and answers) can have rich text, maths, images etc,
included, can be edited, ranked, bookmarked, deleted, tagged, marked
as duplicate, flagged as useless etc etc by the users.

 As with any community there's some rules - for example don't ask a
question thats mostly statistical (with a bit of R) on
www.stackoverflow.com - that should go to www.crossvalidated.com. And
as usual, try and create examples that people can cut and paste to
duplicate your problem.

 Head on over, sign up, and ask! There's also a chat forum:

http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/106/r


Barry

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      David Winsemius
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On Nov 10, 2011, at 7:38 PM, Barry Rowlingson wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
But one IS expected to:
a)  search at (least on SO before posting). Questions that duplicate  
existing  Q&A's will be quickly "closed".
b) read the guidelines:

            

      
      
      
    

        
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      P.B. Lecavalier
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On 11/10/2011 02:32 PM, Cem Girit wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Greetings,

I can assure you that your opinion is welcome here. I do not accept 
views like those expressed above of the kind "quit it, it's the way it 
works here". Open source software is, like the scientific process, about 
innovation and open-mindedness, not being held hostage by the past. If 
good ideas never met controversy, we would live in a perfect world.

Speaking of your suggestions, it sure would help to have more content in 
a posting, such as pictures or data files, but it might limit the 
portability of the messages: I am quite sure that in five years from now 
we will be able to access this text. Not so as for auxiliary content. 
Short-term gains in efficiency might come at the expense of the 
posting's useful life (i.e. those guys having the very same question as 
you do).

I really like the possibility of accessing this list from an email 
client, with the old "offline feel" once you downloaded the latest 
messages in your client, without all sorts of online bells and whistles, 
but I agree that it's an asset to have a web interface, for those who 
don't like "the good ol'way". I like the idea of having different ways 
to do the same things, and that's why I use R. I believe a good approach 
is like that of the openSUSE forums (just picking a familiar example), 
with a web interface and also an NNTP access, emulating a mailing list. 
I would love to have different topics or (for NNTP) different newsgroup 
channels.

It's up to the maintainers or interested contributers.

Philippe Baril Lecavalier