8 — Technical Questions

Objectives

This journal covers the Technical Question unit of the Basic course prep under the Preparatory Materials.
Time estimated: 2 h; taken 2 h ; date started: 2020-02-20; date completed: 2020-02-20

Process

• There are 5 general mailing lists in R, which are intended for asking questions and creating discussions on R software.
  • R-announce: Announcements about newly developed R code and features
    
  • R-help: Discussions about problems and solutions
    
  • R-package-devel: Mainly for R package development inquiries
    
  • R-devel: Code development
    
  • R-package: Announcements on enhanced/new packages

R also provides mailing lists for platform-specific questions, for example (R-sig-Mac, R-sig-Debian and R-sig-Fedora).

When creating a minimum working example:

• Minimum code - Start from scratch, and only add the code that is needed to create the problem. Rename variables and simplify the code as much as possible to make it easier to read.
  
• Complete - include code from all related pieces/layers that are executed when running. Do not post images of your code.
  
• Reproducible - Mention the problem in full detail when posting the question, and make sure your example causes the same issue.

Conclusions and Outlook

• Before posting in R mailing lists, do your basic research, using R prompts help.search("keyword"), apropos("keyword") and RSiteSearch("keyword")
  
• Avoid HTML posting, and attachments (other than PS, PDF, and a few image file formats)
  
• When reporting a bug, make sure you have read R-faq first, then copy-paste the output given by sessionInfo() into your message. Provide the full version number of R and platform that the error was derived on. A common mistake is that you report an error that was fixed in a newer R version. So always make sure you upgrade before confirming any unexpected behaviour.
  
• Try posting more meaningful descriptions when an error occurs. Rather than "R crashed". Provide small, runnable code snippets.

External Resources

• Mailing Lists. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.r-project.org/mail.html
  
• Posting Guide: How to ask good questions that prompt useful answers. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.r-project.org/posting-guide.html