On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 4:41 AM, Patrick Connolly <p_conno...@slingshot.co.nz> wrote: > |> Dear Don and Bert, > |> Allow me to address some of your concerns below. > > Which you do very clearly by positioning your responses underneath > what you're commenting on. That doesn't seem to be possible on SE. > In addition to Yihui's remarks (including "mailing lists are good for discussions, and SO/SE is good for Q&A's"), I would only add that on SE commenting inline is a non-existent problem.
On the Q&A site all communication is restricted to three types, clearly separate forms of interaction: Question, Answer, or Comment. The user may ask only one clearly defined question, well, per Question. And each proposed Answer is supposed to answer that very specific clearly described question. Everything else, going from rants to requests for clarifications go (mostly) in comments (and are mostly ignored). If the question is vague, the OP doesn't need to sift through ML-like threads and comment inline, but simply edits the original Question and adds the required information to make it clear. Same mechanism works nicely for Answers. This means that when dealing with a complex situation what you do is break down the problem in clearly identifiable parts; then in the Question you explain the background and ask a simple question; then in a 2nd Question you re-explain the background (or link to the 1st Question), and ask a second simple question; and so on. This requires a self-discipline that helps the help-providers in understanding where the issue lies, and how it could be addressed. So while on a ML a discussion can quickly digress from a clearly defined question to something extremely more diffuse, threads or no threads (as Yihui mentioned, What was my original question?; and What are we discussing right now?), on a Q&A web interface moderators (and the community) systematically force the users to stay on topic. And personally I find that useful: no more "I stop monitoring a thread because I can't follow it anymore" (anyone?). Regards, Liviu ______________________________________________ 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.
