Can we cut back on the "Is This Homework?" berating? [closed]

Question

First, let me say that Stack Overflow and its related wikis are one of my favorite places on the net, and I've learned tremendously from many of you, and find most of you to be fine and charming folks — and most importantly genuinely helpful.

That said I've noticed a few disturbing trends on the site, and I wanted to discuss one of them here.

I've seen a few past posts on this meta like this one discussing how to dissuade users from using SO as a digital "cheat sheet" to do their homework assignments. I get that, and consider that discussion perfectly valid.

Note on title
(Perhaps the title should be "should we?" if we can not prevent this, but I'm keeping the "can", as I think we "should" and "can".)

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Let me start with an example.
How do I Select Highest Number From Series of <string>_# File Names in Bash Script

User msw posts a comment "Please discuss the speed..." sounds like homework."

This was NOT homework. It was a post regarding research I was doing. I have no idea how they would even think that a student was using NAMD for a homework assignment (few schools even offer an MD course), but let's ignore that for a sec.

There's a right way and a wrong way to ask every question. First let's consider:

• I was a relatively new user at the time.
• msw had 10k or so reputation, so clearly he was a veteran voice.
• The post was clearly not a verbatim repeat of a question.

But rather than point me to a resource on what qualifies as homework, and suggest tagging politely, they took (what in my mind) sounds like an accusatory tone. There was no helpful information -- just an accusation, without even proper grammar to soften the blow (no capitalization? no quotes?)

Now I would hope this would be flagged and or downrated after I clarified that the post was NOT homework, but it was actually celebrated. There were two upvotes for his snide and unwarranted remark. And this is hardly the exception. I regularly see rude and non-helpful Is this homework? comments with nary a piece of solid advice being uprated.

It's as if some at SO celebrate experienced posters berating students/new users in a non-helpful manner.

Now I would not have minded if they asked me that question in a nice way and posted helpful information clarifying what is homework and how to fit it into the SO model. But in this case there was no helpful info, only spite. That's just one example, I've seen many more.
(I'll try to add more examples next week, in the meantime feel free to add some of your own if you want to edit this.)

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That said, I have to say that ever since I started answering questions on the site, I've noticed a propensity for SO users to shoot first, ask questions later when it comes to the Is this homework? questions/accusations.

I've been asked that question myself at times, and in some cases it's put me in a rather humorous and ironic philosophical quandary, because I'm a grad student/researcher who often IS posting questions that are peripheral related to course work -- even homework, albeit NEVER asking verbatim for a full solution or even the majority of a solution. Further, nearly all of my posts ALSO pertain to entrepreneurial ventures I conduct as a hobby (game programming) or my research. In other words, a percentage of my posts are indeed homework RELATED, but they're not a do my homework post.

Now in at least one case I felt I had forgot a homework tag for a course-project/independent-study related question, and chagrined I apologized and added the homework tag ... In time I even started adding this to anything vaguely course-related as a defense mechanism (which worked -- I got less Is this homework? harassment). But even then I felt a bit silly putting "homework" (which makes me think, daily/weekly assignment sort of fare). In retrospect, I now realize I perhaps caved in too quickly. Questions regarding course projects perhaps should be tagged as independent-study or course-project, but not homework, imho.

I think this is true of most beginning dedicated hard-working SW engineers. Yes, they're doing hmwk, but they're going above and beyond the requirements spelled out there-in, and are hoping to reuse the results in for-profit projects or research.

Yet I've seen a kind of ubiquitous harassment about many beginner level questions, even when someone is clearly not truly soliciting a do my homework type solution.

But to note just how much of a witch-hunt it is, I've posted scripting questions which absolutely were not in any way course-related, but received accusations of posting homework, just because I wanted to learn. In these cases I responded "No, not homework, grr..." (minus the "grr"), but did so with much irritation, in my recollection.

Now I'm not the most experienced user, and I do differ to veteran posters and I do appreciate what the anti-homework posting crowd is trying to accomplish.

But I would just like to see people be a bit more selective about when they start hurling the Is this homework? accusation, or at least ask it a bit more gently, if the posting seems ambiguous (as in it could be hmwk, it could not be).

Remember, we're all beginners and if there's an overwhelming homework witch-hunt overtone on the site, not only will it scare of new SW engineers who could most benefit from the site, but it will also often lead to irritation, hurt feelings, and people throwing their keyboards (don't worry I didn't go that far).

My perspective is:

1. If a question is a verbatim copy, post your evidence (as in hey, I'm an instructor and this is my question OR hey, I've seen this question in school xxxx's hmwk for course yyyy.)
2. If you have no evidence that it's a verbatim copy, but suspect that the question could be homework-involved and it's a new user, point them to SO's rules/quasi-rules (like this informal guide) with respect to homework, suggest a homework tag, if necessary, but explain homework tags aren't necessary or appropriate for course projects, research, independent studies, etc.

So can we agree to cut down on the non-helpful homework accusations, and follow the above productive guidelines to managing the homework issue??

Who's with me? Thoughts?

Answer 1

The reason people ask "is this homework" is that homework is often not disclosed.

The homework tag is not a "Do My Homework" tag; it is a declaration that this is a question about a homework assignment. Asking people "is this homework" is not beratement; it is an acknowledgement that the question being asked looks like a homework assignment. Homework questions follow different rules than non-homework questions.

If you require that people not ask "Is this Homework," I will start getting flags to the effect that "This is an undeclared homework assignment." If I agree, I'm inclined to close such questions as "Too Localized."

Answer 2

I couldn't care less if it was their homework or not or if they're cheating. But I do care if they couldn't be bothered to even change the wording from the assignment. An honest attempt on their part gets bonus points.

In other words, a question like:

Why can't I foo the bar? I tried baz...

is perfectly OK, whereas a question like:

You have 3 apples and 2 oranges. Show that you can foo the bar...

will get a digital slap from me. By that I mean a down vote + close vote + comment (which may or may not be snarky). This is absolutely non-negotiable.

Answer 3

It has been a long time since the guidelines were updated or reviewed in any meaningful way. I just read through them again and made several edits, one of which was to add this text:

It's okay to ask if a question is homework, but be polite.

Does that help you feel a little better?

I think it is often necessary to ask, because of artificial constraint situations mentioned above and because many of us are willing to help the student, but don't want to do their homework for them. But we can be polite about it.

Answer 4

I think the problem comes down to one of perspective:

I regularly see rude and non-helpful Is this homework? comments with nary a piece of solid advice being uprated.

That's because you see the question, "Is this homework?" as fundamentally being "rude and non-helpful." You seem to feel that someone asking if it a question is homework is somehow out-of-bounds, inappropriate, or even condescending. You assume that someone writing this is saying, "he's just asking us to do his homework for him."

Perhaps you should change your perspective. Have you considered that the person said "sounds like homework" because it does? Did you consider taking the comment at face value, rather than taking it as an accusation of wrongdoing? Basically, he said that it read like a homework assignment. Which it kinda does: homework assignments often end with phrases like "Please discuss..."

This is basic Internet interaction at play: don't assume malice when another explanation is available. Asking whether something is homework is not an accusation; it's a question. An accusation would be "This is homework, you dirty cheater!"

Now I would hope this would be flagged and or downrated after I clarified that the post was NOT homework, but it was actually celebrated.

Again, this seems to be something of a misunderstanding. It wasn't celebrated; it was agreed with. There's a difference. Celebrated would be comments added in response to yours telling you that it was homework, despite your insistence otherwise.

You clarified in a comment that your post wasn't homework. But you never changed the post itself. It still reads a bit like a homework assignment. So other people simply agreed with him.

Again, you shouldn't see that as an attack. It's simply other people agreeing with what someone said.

So can we agree to cut down on the non-helpful homework accusations, and follow the above productive guidelines to managing the homework issue??

Um, no. I disagree that these comments are "non-helpful". I don't think you've proven that to be the case. I also disagree that your guidelines would be "productive"; they require direct physical evidence to even ask the person if it's homework.

Remember: new users don't know about tags. They don't know what the homework tag is. And a lot of times, if you ask a user if something is homework... they'll tell you it is. Which is why we ask.

Answer 5

No, I don't think we can cut back on the "Is This Homework?" berating.

NB: I said "can," not "should."

Past experience and general knowledge of human psychology show that Meta is a pretty effective tool for filing technical bug reports, suggesting new features and requesting support, but kind of terrible at changing users' behavior.

(For example, you're not the first person to bring up people asking about "is this homework"; other people have complained about "I only help people with high accept rates"; dealing with link-only/non-standalone answers is always popular, too.)

My advice to you: try to educate these users with (super-gentle, super-polite) links to Meta and the SE blog, but if they don't listen after one attempt, just ignore them. You're not going to change their minds; all you'll do is pollute the comment area with noise and waste valuable time you'll never get back. There are plenty of good users out there too, and they'll get you good results most of the time.

EDIT:
I hope this post motivates people to change, too. You can even link to it in your polite, gentle comments. But here's the problem with behavior posts on Meta I referred to earlier: most people who see them don't need convincing, and most people who need convincing won't see them.

Meta users, who lead the community — I'm referring to the mods, of course; the rest of us are only community leaders in our own heads — tend to have the same mental representations of what's considered "constructive," "rude," etc. in the context of Stack Exchange. It's not surprising that, when they apply those representations to specific cases, they rarely disagree about how to handle said cases.

Answer 6

I don't think we need to.

One reason to ask is that homework assignments often have arbitrary constraints that would not typically apply in a real-world situation.

For example, I see a lot of C++ questions asking to somehow manipulate a C-style string, or char array. The STL string class has been around for 15 years now, and is a much better way to handle strings, so the instinct of most C++ developers is to suggest that the OP use that instead, which will typically eliminate or greatly simplify the question being presented.

Rather than initiate the loop of "You should use strings" only to hear back, "I can't use strings" the potential answerers establish what we're dealing with up front.

Yes, it takes the same number of interactions, but does not include providing an answer the OP can't use. And since it is the questioner who is seeking help, it should be the incumbent on the questioner to disclose all the constraints he is operating under.

If we adopt the tone that answerers should assume that all questions are non-homework unless tagged as such or if the answerer has solid proof that it is not, then we are going to get a lot of frustrated answerers, who will ultimately stop answering both homework and non-homework questions.

Answer 7

It is a valid question to ask. Consider the following: I recently saw a post asking how to parse a particular JSON string. My answer depends upon the OP's constraints. That is, if this is a work project, I would advise using a 3rd-party library - no sense in re-inventing the wheel. If this is homework however, the expectations are different. That sort of question on a homework assignment often assumes that it is on the student to develop the algorithm. So I posted the following comment:

What are your constraints? Can you use a 3rd-party library? Or is this a homework assignment where you are expected to code the parsing yourself?

No malice intended.