Folks: If this has been previously discussed and settled, please say so and refer me to the discussion. If you believe this to be inappropriate or otherwise frivolous, also please say so, as I do not wish to waste your time or this space.
I write as a long time reader and sometimes contributor to r-help. Due to R's growth in usage by a broad data analysis community (engineers, scientists, social scientists, finance, "informaticians", as well as more "traditional" statisticians), this list seems to me to becoming deluged by requests for help by "casual" users and students for whom R is not going to be regularly or extensively used. I would characterize this group as having only basic statistical, programming, and data analysis skills. This is not meant as a criticism, and there are certainly many for whom this is inaccurate. But ... By and large, such users have not spend much time with R's docs, including tutorials or FAQ's. Many of their posts reflect this, and can be answered with basic replies or references to docs, to wit: What is the difference between "ifelse" and "if else"? FAQ 7.31. Confusion of data frames, matrices, and spreadsheet tables; etc. Would it be useful, then, to establish an R-beginners list specifically to absorb this traffic and free up R-help from what I would say was its original intent, to provide a forum for serious, more dedicated R users (Again, no criticism is intended here)? I realize that, whether or not this suggestion is worthwhile, there are several ways it could fail. First, too few might be interested in responding to posts on the new list. Second, too few might consider themselves "beginners" who post to it. Etc. So I would certainly say any such effort ought to be a pilot and tentative . I'll stop here. Again, criticize freely and/or send me off somewhere else to prior discussion. Or to where it should be discussed. Or just ignore, of course. Best, Bert -- Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics (650) 467-7374 ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
