Update: Just seen tachyon's opinion - I guess I am stating a point for those (myself included) who get upset with students looking for an answer when they have made no apparent effort to answer the question themselves - heuristics to establish the effort current expended this are located in the same muscle that can cause knee jerks, so be careful. I once witnessed a standup fight between two students on helping each other - one (extremely capable) student had the extreme position on help of 'I had to learn it, so can you', the other (less capable, but no dummy) was quite upset by that.

After the recent controversy over yet another obvious homework question (and to be fair, the OP did eventually say it was HW, and he did post his own answer later on), I propose a way to still help these questions without disadvantaging other students who dont come here.

If a question is obviously HW, it could be marked or moderated as such, and a clear visual tag paced on the OP that this is considered a HW question. Further, PM's responding to the question would be asked to refrain from providing implementation answers, but to restrict themselves to hints, clues, links, references and theories - much as happen this time.

One week from the OP's posting date, PM's that have implementations can post - not sure if they should post answers in the OP, or use an Answer : <original title> post.

The weeks delay is because, if it really is homework, it is probably due within a week of the OP asking, so answering after this period doesn't disadvantage students who answered with their own or other resources.

Students who are posting their solution with a request for help to get some part working are quite a different kettle of fish, and I dont mind helping them as they have obviously struggled hard to get to the point where they come here for help. But questions where it isn't clear the OP has made any effort at all so far could be handled as I propose.

Now you may retort. <ducks>

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#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;use strict;use brain;

In reply to Proposal for handling homework questions by leriksen

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