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We are bound to get smartasses who will want us to do their school homeworks for them eventually. Their questions will be sufficiently nontrivial, they are unlikely to meet any common closure criteria, and while answering them would be actually harmful to their learning process, by being overly critical we'll hurt these who genuinely could use our (productive) help while solving homeworks.

Honestly, I have no clue how to deal with that, and it will happen, I'm sure. Bringing the topic up for discussion.

Proposal: English Language Learners

9

I believe this is the canonical answer on SE - I've seen it referred to in several places.

Basically: require the asker to contribute to making it a good question, then answer in good faith. Pretty much like any other question.

3

See this discussion: Homework questions are not considered problematic, they are questions, and it doesn't really add to try and distinguish or worry about it too much.

2

I agree with Stoney and Hrafn, but I would like to add that a question should contain only one question, unless it's several sub-questions that function in support of the main question, or if they follow naturally from the main question. What I mean is that I don't want a list of 10 homework questions "what are the correct verb forms in these sentences?".

2
  • Ayup. Just like any other question! – StoneyB on hiatus Jan 11 '13 at 1:26
  • @StoneyB: Exactly. I think this is what people think of when they whisper in horror the word "homework"... – Cerberus Jan 11 '13 at 2:09

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