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Homework on StackOverflow
I've seen a pattern on StackOverflow where people often get very snippy when someone asks what is obviously a homework question. They say, "go do your own homework", vote to lock, downvote, etc.
My question is, do people really think it's the job of SO members to police other peoples' homework?
Yes:
When the user has stated that it is homework and what issues they are having with it, and it shows that they have done the basic background work. The benefits of getting answers on SO are that you have some indication of reliability of the answers and you also get varying viewpoints all together.
e.g. Why is this particular algorithm O(nlogn), when it looks like O(n^2)?
No:
When the question is poorly worded, they have done no background work or they haven't even indicated that they have started to understand the problem.
e.g. Tell me the difference between an apple and an orange?
So basically, the rules are the same as for any other good SO question!
No, people shouldn't answer other peoples homework questions.
Talking about it, hints, similar examples, etc. are great. But posting answers, even with well thought out and helpful explanations does harm.
Programming homework is a highly 'kinetic' learning process. Talking about it is not enough, one must actually do it.
'Police'? I'd say "taking an active interest in the health of our future colleagues".
I don't see a big difference between a homework question and a work-related question.
A better differentiator is what is being asked and how is is being asked. "Can someone give me tested, commented, debugged code for sorting" is a very different question than "I wrote this sorting code and it fails under these conditions, and I can't see why, please help".
When someone is asking the community to do their work (whether academic or professional), we should ignore or vote down, and perhaps even heap scorn on them.
When someone is asking for help with a specific issue and has give it some thought beforehand, we should help, and vote up or praise if appropriate.
From my perspective, homework questions can be no different from regular questions, and typically deserve to be answered. Asking a question about basic programming concepts is not any less legitimate than asking questions about the particulars of IE's JS engine.
The other thing is, even if you don't think you should answer the question, someone else inevitably will (unless the question gets closed). There's always people on SO willing to pick the low hanging fruit.
One might say it depends on the content of the question. For example, a question like "what makes this method O(n^2)?" is a lot different than "please write bubble sort in Java." At the same time, these are all questions that someone trying to learn a language must answer at some point.
It doesn't seem to be up to us to enforce someone else's bad behavior in their classes (like cheating online), and it'd be a difficult policy to enforce should we decide to do so. And all questions are questions, ultimately.
What's the worst that could happen?
Here's a scenario: SO becomes the place for students to post their homework questions in the style of "plz give me the codez". These questions are all answered by rep-whores until there are basically no more CS exercises left unanswered in the universe.
Is that so bad?
I say, if you don't like HW question, vote them down. But don't close them. Your undeservingly high salary depends on there being way too many non-programmers polluting the job market, after having graduated with a CS degree by copying answers from the internet.
When I come across a question that appears to be a homework question, I usually provide partial information, so the asker can hopefully figure the rest out (him|her)self.
Sometimes the "homework" tag gets attached by someone who's not the original poster, based on an assumption that may not be correct. All I care about is truth in advertising. If it's homework, I'm less likely to answer, or my answer may be more pedagogical in nature. If it's not a homework question, since we're all suffering in a sea of software complexity, quick guidance towards a solution is much more appreciated.
I've got no problems with homework questions as such... If they generate interesting and informative answers then there's very little downside.
It's worth keeping in mind that banning people from cheating on their homework on Stack Overflow won't necessarily stop them from using other sites to cheat, especially ones where you can pay for answers. (Not that all homework-related questions are cheating)
