[R] R-help mailing list activity / R-not-help?

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 25/01/2016 3:33 PM, Hasan Diwan wrote:
> There exists a fine line between being unintentionally rude, but helpful
> and purposely putting someone down. -- H

I'm afraid I don't think your point is relevant.  I didn't claim all the 
people who were rude did it unintentionally.  However,  I don't know 
anyone on the list who is always rude and never helpful. Oliver claimed 
almost everyone is like that.

I actually agree with a weaker version of John's proposal (which I cut 
out of my reply to Oliver).  I can imagine a public reprimand from one 
of the moderators would be appropriate.  It would never be appropriate 
from general list members; that's what leads to flame wars.

I'm not a moderator, so I would not publicly "remind the poster to reply 
in a more moderate tone", and neither should you (unless you're a 
moderator).  It would be much better if one or both of us posted a more 
helpful response when we saw a rude, unhelpful one.

Duncan Murdoch


>
> On 25 January 2016 at 12:07, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On 25/01/2016 2:45 PM, Oliver Keyes wrote:
> >
> >> I disagree, and would argue that fails to take a systemic view of this
> >> kind of behaviour.
> >>
> >> If individual commentators are acerbic and are only privately
> >> reprimanded, from the perspective of everyone else it looks like the
> >> acerbic reply was A-OK. Someone said something unnecessarily hostile
> >> and the response was...nada. That creates an environment where there
> >> are no clear examples of what crosses a line and no clear expectation
> >> that moderation is even a thing that happens. Indeed, I was shocked to
> >> discover this list _was_ moderated precisely because all I see is
> >> people being mean and nothing much else happening.
> >>
> >
> > Why would you bother to read it if that's all you see?  I think there are
> > examples of posts here which are not at all helpful, and others which are
> > rude, but the majority are actually helpful (even some of the rude ones).
> >
> > Duncan Murdoch
> >
> >
> > ______________________________________________
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> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
>
>
>