More R-help

This page has the following sections:

Reading R-help
Other mailing lists
Writing messages
Resources

Reading R-help

I find it hard to believe that anyone reads all R-help messages. You shouldn’t try. Skim the ones that have interesting subjects, peruse the ones that are interesting, and delete the rest unread.

Other mailing lists

There are several additional R mailing lists.

The R-devel mailing list is for the discussion of possible bugs and possible new directions for the language. It is a public mailing list — it is not just for official developers. As complete confirmation that it is a public list, it is also the venue for certain advanced programming topics — see the posting guide.

There are a number of R-sig mailing lists. The “sig” stands for “Special Interest Group”. There are domain specific lists, technique specific lists, …

To see the mailing lists that are available and to sign up for any of them, click on the “Mailing Lists” item on the left side of the R home page. That is also the way to unsubscribe from a list — do not write to the list to try to unsubscribe.

Writing messages

Writing a message to a mailing list should be done only after you have exhausted other avenues. If you decide you do need to write a message, then:

• Read the posting guide.
• Follow the posting guide.
• Consider the advise in Circle 9 of The R Inferno.

If you think that Stackoverflow is a better alternative, you should go through a similar process.  The culture is somewhat different but the principles are the same.

Resources

To get to the posting guide:

On the R Project website click “Mailing Lists” on left side. The link to the posting guide is on the first line.

Back to top level of Impatient R