[R] (Off-Topic) Time for a companion mailing list for R packages?

Stephen H. Dawson, DSL @erv|ce @end|ng |rom @hd@w@on@com
Thu Jan 13 14:31:01 CET 2022 

Great discussion thread.

The problem is not a mailing list. The problem is the inability to 
segment questions. Segment, by keyword or sub-directory (loose word) or 
any other compartmentalization.

QUESTION
What other technology options are available here beyond a mailing list?


*Stephen Dawson, DSL*
/Executive Strategy Consultant/
Business & Technology
+1 (865) 804-3454
http://www.shdawson.com <http://www.shdawson.com>


On 1/13/22 8:25 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> Currently help for contributed packages is available on StackOverflow, 
> package-specific web sites and Github.
>
> I rarely read package-specific (e.g. RStudio) web pages, and have only 
> posted questions there a few times, with generally unsatisfactory 
> results.
>
> Most package developers (including tidyverse ones) respond very 
> helpfully on Github, but to post there you need to already have a very 
> good idea of where the problem lies.  It's not an appropriate place 
> for beginners to ask for help.
>
> That leaves StackOverflow.  It gets way too much traffic from people 
> who don't pose their questions well, but it has the advantage over a 
> mailing list that questions can be edited and improved (or deleted) 
> after the fact.  We should be sending beginners there.  And if you 
> want to read questions and help people, apply N95 filters to the 
> questions:  e.g. I mainly read questions that have been unanswered and 
> undeleted for an hour or more.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
> On 13/01/2022 7:44 a.m., Kevin Thorpe wrote:
>> 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.
>>
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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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