From gavin.simpson at ucl.ac.uk  Mon Aug 23 10:37:43 2010
From: gavin.simpson at ucl.ac.uk (Gavin Simpson)
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:37:43 +0100
Subject: [Rd] No RTFM?
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.100823032204.Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk>
References: <XFMail.100823032204.Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <1282552663.2375.26.camel@desktop.localdomain>

On Mon, 2010-08-23 at 03:22 +0100, Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk wrote:
<snip />
> 
> [3] I have tried to argue for a moderate and flexible spirit in
>     what is advised in the Posting Guide. I am very uncomfortable
>     about proposals as prescriptive and rigid as yours seem to be.
>     Users, especially beginners, are likely to be discouraged from
>     posting to R-help if faced with stringent (and possibly not
>     relevant) requirements on how they should post. If faced with
>     responses which chastise them for not "following the rules"
>     they may well be put off using R altogether.
> 
>     As I have said before, I see the function of R-help as helping,
>     in as cooperative a way as possible. The function of the Posting
>     Guide should likewise be to help them to write good questions,
>     with advice on what mey be necessary, what useful, what not useful.
> 
>     The current Posting Guide is already quite reasonable in these
>     respects, and perhaps would benefit most from being made being
>     somewhat re-formatted, without essential change.
> 
> Ted.

I concur with Ted's comments above. Bugzilla has this form of
hand-holding, prescriptive format for filing bugs against software
projects. It works there where people are only supplying bug reports. I
don't see that it can work for the more free-form nature of a mailing
list.

The posting guide should be there to help people i) help themselves find
the information about R that they need, and if this hasn't helped ii)
formulate an appropriate question with the *relevant* information.
Earlier ideas in this thread suggested including a lot of extraneous
information not relevant to most R-Help questions.

I see Paul that in your reply that your aim is to make things more clear
and more concise. Perhaps the best way forward now, if you are
sufficiently motivated and have the time, would be to rewrite the
posting guide and send it to the list for comments/suggestions. IIRC
this was how the original guide was produced.

G

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[Rd] No RTFM?
Gavin Simpson