From B.Rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk  Fri Apr  4 19:39:30 2003
From: B.Rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk (Barry Rowlingson)
Date: Fri Apr  4 19:39:42 2003
Subject: [Rd] I hope Sally also loves Bob...
Message-ID: <3E8DC352.1090702@lancaster.ac.uk>


  A ridiculous number of answers to a fairly trivial query on R-news 
lately - 13 messages on the archive so far telling how to do 
paste(c("Bob","loves","Sally"),collapse=" ").

  I think a lot of this is due to the increased latency because of 
network and mailer problems that Martin mentioned earlier, but there's 
an inherent latency in mailing lists that means any trivial query is in 
danger of being swamped by a dozen identical responses.

  There are very low-latency options - web-based forums. Some people 
object to them since it requires them to visit a site to check for new 
messages, rather than have them appear in their mailboxes. Well, some 
systems can email you new messages or new thread-starters. The important 
thing is that any response is up instantly such that there's no need for 
a dozen identical responses.

  Mailing lists are fine for low-level, low-interactivity information 
transfer, but R-help isn't that anymore.

  Is there any interest in this from R-core or anyone around R-core 
(R-mantle??)? Please email me if you have any desire to see something 
like this, or if you can supply any resources to get something going. I 
may be able to requisition a stray server from somewhere to get 
something going.

Barry Rowlingson
Maths and Stats
Lancaster University
Lancaster, UK


[Rd] I hope Sally also loves Bob...
Barry Rowlingson