Posting guide

Why?

• Good questions attract good responses.

• Formulating a good question can help point to the answer.

• Good questions help avoid embarrassment.

Preparing

• Read the relevant R documentation. Use help.start() to start the HTML search engine. If you are having trouble with function somefunc, try ?somefunc. If you are searching for a function, try help.search("somefunc"). Read the vignette(s) for the package(s) using browseVignettes(package="somepkg")

• Search the FAQ and Bioconductor and R-help archives for similar posts. Try a Google search.

• Simplify code to a minimal, self-contained example. If reporting an error, be sure to reproduce the error in a new R session, started with the --vanilla option to avoid loading .Rprofile or .RData files.

• Ensure that your installed packages are up-to-date.

Composing

• Start a new email message instead of replying to an existing email and changing the subject.

• Use an informative subject line. This will help attract responders and also helps others in the future when they search the archives.

• Identify yourself. Anonymous postings are much less likely to get responses.

• Include a simple and reproducible example along with the output of sessionInfo(). If the example produces an error, provide the error message and the output of traceback().

• Send email to the appropriate list. Use the Bioconductor mailing list for questions about specific package, or conceptual questions. The R-help mailing list is for questions about the underlying R program. The Bioc-devel and R-devel lists are for discussing code development and other technical issues.

• Ensure that your code is readable, and can be cut and pasted into an R session.

• Use plain text instead of HTML; it is smaller in size and easier to read.

• Avoid attachments; if specific data or images are essential, post them to a publicly accessible location and include the link in your email.

• Read over your mail. Is it polite and easy to understand? Remember that responses on the Bioconductor mailing list are from volunteers.

Replying

• Respond to everyone in the list, which ensures that your response is archived.

• If possible, write an answer that can be understood by readers with different scientific backgrounds and skill levels / skill profiles.

• When answering a question, consider including some explanation of how you arrived at your solution (rather than just writing a solution). This way, you help people not only to solve their problem at hand, but also to help themselves in the future.

• Rudeness and ad hominem comments are not acceptable.

• Brevity is OK. Consider, though, that information that is obvious and not worth mentioning to you may be very helpful to others.

• If you believe the issue has been discussed before, please give the URL of the relevant thread or web site.

Acknowledgments

This posting guide has been heavily adapted from the R-help posting guide, various comments and suggestions by Bioconductor posters and inspired by Eric Steven Raymond's essay on How To Ask Questions The Smart Way.