From seanpor at acm.org  Sat Jun  7 09:10:01 2008
From: seanpor at acm.org (Sean O'Riordain)
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2008 08:10:01 +0100
Subject: [Rd] Posting Guide
In-Reply-To: <971536df0806061030i75474172xff100ece76a23eec@mail.gmail.com>
References: <971536df0806061030i75474172xff100ece76a23eec@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <8ed68eed0806070010q4d447cffr2b5d92e849c145e0@mail.gmail.com>

Gabor,
I agree.  Furthermore I think it might be useful to add that in my
experience (and I'm sure others as well) that the process of creating
a simple reproduceable example for an email to r-help will in most
cases clarify what I'm trying to do and actually solve my own problem
for me - once or twice I've been tempted to email my problem and my
own solution for the archive.

As a side note I tend to put a fair bit of work (i.e. measured in days
of calendar time and hours of work) for fear of being abused on the
list for not doing enough prep work.  Fear is probably not the idea
motivator though...

Regards,
Sean


2008/6/6 Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at gmail.com>:
> People read the posting guide yet they are still unable to create an acceptable
> post. e.g.
> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2008-June/164092.html
>
> I think the problem is that the guide is not clear or concise enough.
> I suggest we add a summary at the beginning which gets to the heart
> of what a poster is expected to provide:
>
> Summary
>
> To maximize your change of getting a response when posting provide (1)
> commented,
> (2) minimal, (3) self-contained and (4) reproducible code.  (This one
> line summary
> also appears at the end of each message to r-help.)
>
> "Self-contained" and "reproducible" mean that a responder can copy the
> questioner's code to
> the clipboard, paste it into their R session and see the same problem
> you as the questioner
> see.  Note that dput(mydata) will display mydata in a reproducible way.
> Self-contained and reproducible are needed because:
> (1) Self-Effort. It shows that the questioner tried to solve the
> problem by themself first.
> (2) Test framework. Often the responder needs to play with the code a
> bit in order to respond
> or at least to give the best answer.  They can't do that without a
> test framework that includes
> the data and the code to run it and its not fair to ask them to not
> only answer the question but
> also to come up with test data and to complete incomplete code.
> (3) Archives. Questions and answers go into the archives so they are
> not only for the benefit of
> of the questioner but also for the benefit of all future searchers of
> the archive.  That means
> that its not finished if you have solved the problem for yourself.
> You still need to ensure that
> the thread has a complete solution. (For that reason its also
> important to give a meaningful
> subject to each post.)
>
> "Commented" and "minimal" also reduce the time it takes to understand
> the problem.
> Don't just dump your code as is into the message since you are just
> wasting your own
> time. Its not likely anyone will answer a message if the questioner
> has not taken the
> time to reduce it to its essential elements.  Surprisingly, quite
> often understanding what
> the problem is takes the responder most of the time -- not solving the
> problem. Once the
> question is actually understood its often quite fast to answer.  Thus
> in addition to posting
> it in a minimal form, comment on it sufficiently so that the responder
> knows what the code
> does and is intended to produce.  It may be obvious to the questioner
> who is embroiled in
> the problem but that does not mean its obvious to others.
>
> Introduction
>
> .... rest of posting guide ...
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>



[Rd] Posting Guide
Sean O'Riordain