[R] (Off-Topic) Time for a companion mailing list for R packages?
PIKAL Petr
petr@p|k@| @end|ng |rom prechez@@cz
Thu Jan 13 14:28:51 CET 2022
Hallo all
I do not consider answers here unresponsive or unfriendly. Most answers point to the way how to procced and solve the problems. Although RTFM is sometimes the best what anybody can do (and I did it myself around 1997 when I started with R). Hardly anybody here is flamed when he/she asks simple questions.
To create some other list where questions about broad range of available packages should be answered is, IMHO, wrong way forward. You need to have some critical mass of answering people in list to be worth to attend.
You state
>it can be very hard for novice users to get the help they need.<
but can we prove it? How many unanswered questions are in a year? How many responses are "this is off topic" as the only response in thread? How many responses are "contact maintainer" as the only response in thread? An most importantly are these numbers increasing?
Cheers
Petr
> -----Original Message-----
> From: R-help <r-help-bounces using r-project.org> On Behalf Of Kevin Thorpe
> Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2022 1:45 PM
> To: Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil using dcn.davis.ca.us>
> Cc: R Help Mailing List <r-help using r-project.org>
> Subject: Re: [R] (Off-Topic) Time for a companion mailing list for R packages?
>
> This is an interesting issue and something I have been thinking about raising with
> my fellow volunteer moderators.
>
> I honestly don’t know what the best solution is. Personally, I would loathe
> having to check multiple web-forums/mailing lists to find an answer. New users
> often do not appreciate the subtleties (i.e. RStudio is not R) and will continue to
> post here. The frequent reply to questions outside base R that inform them they
> are off-topic could come across as unfriendly. That could have the side effect of
> making the community appear elitist. Folks are also often referred to package
> maintainers but not all maintainers are equally responsive to queries about their
> packages. In summary, it can be very hard for novice users to get the help they
> need.
>
> I appreciate the desire of many to keep the focus of this list narrow, yet despite
> the narrow mandate there are many readers who can answer non-base R
> questions, which is probably one of the reasons we see the questions. I wonder
> if there would be an appetite to create a new list, R-package-help, that has a
> broad mandate (as suggested by Avi). Naturally there is no guarantee that
> specific questions about some esoteric package will be answered, but that’s a
> different problem. On the other hand, why not expand the mandate of R-help
> rather than going to the trouble of creating a new list? Like I said, I don’t know.
>
> Thanks for raising the issue.
>
> Kevin
>
>
> > On Jan 12, 2022, at 11:24 PM, Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil using dcn.davis.ca.us>
> wrote:
> >
> > TL;DR The people responsible for tidyverse don't think much of mailing lists.
> >
> > IANAMLA (I am not mailing list admin) and I know some people get kind of
> heated about these things, but my take is that this list _is_ about R so to be on
> topic the question needs to be about R and how to get things done in R. Since
> contributed packages are almost by definition creating capabilities linked with
> specific problem domains or domain-specific-languages (DSLs), and there are
> thousands of these, it isn't practical to support questions framed within those
> DSLs here. It seems perfectly legitimate IMHO to mention such packages here, as
> long as the question does not hinge on that package, and even to offer small
> solutions to posed R problems using such packages. Others may disagree with
> my perspective on this. Unfortunately all of this this subtlety is usually lost upon
> newbies, much to the detriment of this list's reputation.
> >
> > The responsibility to setup and manage support for contributed packages
> belongs to the package maintainer. In the case of tidyverse, the general opinion
> of those people seems to be that web forums avoid the "only unformatted info
> can be shared" nature of traditional mailing lists, so mailing lists have AFAIK not
> been built or tended.
> >
> > Unfortunately, they also try to "allow all topics" as much as possible in those
> forums to minimize the appearance of unfriendliness to beginners, but my
> impression is that this leads to such a wide range of topics that many posts don't
> get answered. I have certainly found it to be just too much quantity to sift
> through, and I really am selective about which portions of the tidyverse I work
> with anyway, so I don't hang out there much at all.
> >
> > On January 12, 2022 7:27:20 PM PST, Avi Gross via R-help <r-help using r-
> project.org> wrote:
> >> Respectfully, this forum gets lots of questions that include non-base R
> components and especially packages in the tidyverse. Like it or not, the
> extended R language is far more useful and interesting for many people and
> especially those who do not wish to constantly reinvent the wheel.
> >> And repeatedly, we get people reminding (and sometimes chiding) others for
> daring to post questions or supply answers on what they see as a pure R list.
> They have a point.
> >> Yes, there are other places (many not being mailing lists like this one) where
> we can direct the questions but why can't there be an official mailing list
> alongside this one specifically focused on helping or just discussing R issues
> related partially to the use of packages. I don't mean for people making a
> package to share, just users who may be searching for an appropriate package
> or using a common package, especially the ones in the tidyverse that are NOT
> GOING AWAY just because some purists ...
> >> I prefer a diverse set of ways to do things and base R is NOT enough for me,
> nor frankly is R with all packages included as I find other languages suit my
> needs at times for doing various things. If this group is for purists, fine. Can we
> have another for the rest of us? Live and let live.
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com>
> >> To: Kai Yang <yangkai9999 using yahoo.com>; R-help Mailing List
> >> <r-help using r-project.org>
> >> Sent: Wed, Jan 12, 2022 3:22 pm
> >> Subject: Re: [R] how to find the table in R studio
> >>
> >> On 12/01/2022 3:07 p.m., Kai Yang via R-help wrote:
> >>> Hi all,
> >>> I created a function in R. It will be generate a table "temp". I can view it in R
> studio, but I cannot find it on the top right window in R studio. Can someone tell
> me how to find it in there? Same thing for f_table.
> >>> Thank you,
> >>> Kai
> >>> library(tidyverse)
> >>>
> >>> f1 <- function(indata , subgrp1){
> >>> subgrp1 <- enquo(subgrp1)
> >>> indata0 <- indata
> >>> temp <- indata0 %>% select(!!subgrp1) %>% arrange(!!subgrp1) %>%
> >>> group_by(!!subgrp1) %>%
> >>> mutate(numbering =row_number(), max=max(numbering))
> >>> view(temp)
> >>> f_table <- table(temp$Species)
> >>> view(f_table)
> >>> }
> >>>
> >>> f1(iris, Species)
> >>>
> >>
> >> Someone is sure to point out that this isn't an RStudio support list,
> >> but your issue is with R, not with RStudio. You created the table in
> >> f1, but you never returned it. The variable f_table is local to the
> >> function. You'd need the following code to do what you want:
> >>
> >> f1 <- function(indata , subgrp1){
> >> subgrp1 <- enquo(subgrp1)
> >> indata0 <- indata
> >> temp <- indata0 %>% select(!!subgrp1) %>% arrange(!!subgrp1) %>%
> >> group_by(!!subgrp1) %>%
> >> mutate(numbering =row_number(), max=max(numbering))
> >> view(temp)
> >> f_table <- table(temp$Species)
> >> view(f_table)
> >> f_table
> >> }
> >>
> >> f_table <- f1(iris, Species)
> >>
> >> It's not so easy to also make temp available. You can do it with
> >> assign(), but I think you'd be better off splitting f1 into two
> >> functions, one to create temp, and one to create f_table.
> >>
> >> Duncan Murdoch
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> >> 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.
> >>
> >> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> >> 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.
> >
> > --
> > Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> > 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.
>
> --
> Kevin E. Thorpe
> Head of Biostatistics, Applied Health Research Centre (AHRC) Li Ka Shing
> Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital Assistant Professor, Dalla Lana
> School of Public Health University of Toronto
> email: kevin.thorpe using utoronto.ca Tel: 416.864.5776 Fax: 416.864.3016
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> 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.
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