Are we starting to get homework questions?

Question

And if so, what should we do about them?

Quite what "homework" means for TeX, I don't know. There are some places that have courses in how to use TeX/LaTeX, and presumably they assign homework, but there are a few aspects of that that make me doubtful that people would ask their homework questions here in the same way that they do on, say, Maths-SX.

Nonetheless, we do get the occasional question that has a "homework feel" to it in that they appear to simply state a problem with no motivation or explanation as to what they've already done to try to solve it. An example is: https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/32625/86

Now, I don't think that actual homework questions are going to be a large problem for us so I don't think that having an official homework policy is either necessary or useful (and given the hassle that they have on Maths-SX with deciding and enforcing such a policy, I'd like to avoid it here). But questions like the above need some action. I'd rather treat the symptom than the cause and it seems that the simplest treatment is to have a text block that can be used to put a polite and informative comment on such a question.

In order to devise such a text block, we need to identify what exactly it is about questions like this that needs improving. Here's my initial reaction:

1. Impersonal. I like to know that I'm helping a person so use of the personal pronoun is good in a question.
2. No motivation. Not for the original problem, but for the TeX-related part. What is this for? What sort of document? That sort of thing.
3. No work done. There's no evidence of having thought how one might start, or what tools one might use.

Now I'm well aware that such a question can just be a feature of someone's lack of facility with English, or with this place. That's why I think that treating the symptoms, not the cause, is better for us: it's the same treatment whether it came from homework as from someone's Norwegian research article. That's also why I'd like a polite text block that can be used.

(And, just to remind everyone, the text blocks are not there because they have to be used, but to provide a base-line of civility and politeness for this place.)

I guess I have to have a question ... so here are some:

1. Does anyone have a different main outlook on the issues that I've raised?
2. Does anyone have other characteristics of these questions that should be addressed in a text block?
3. Does anyone have a suggestion for the text block itself?
4. Am I just tilting at windmills?

Answer 1

I guess questions of this type can just be considered "low quality", regardless of whether they stem from a homework problem or a lack of experience with the site.

There's a "How to Ask" page on stackoverflow, which addresses a lot of the mentioned issues ("Do your homework, be specific, make it relevant to others..."). Maybe we could refer people to that site, using something along the lines of

Hi ..., welcome to TeX.sx. In its current form, your question might not get many answers. Please take a look at the [How to Ask](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/how-to-ask)-Page and try to improve your question according to the guidance found there. If you have questions about what to do or if you don't quite understand what I mean, please ask for clarification using the Comment function.

Answer 2

I realise that the discussion here is not very recent and things obviously change, which may well be colouring my response to this page.

However, for what little it is worth, I think that it is completely unethical to knowingly assist people to cheat. It undermines the whole purpose of setting, marking and completing assignments, wastes instructors' time, and is not in the best interests of any students. (It does no favours to the person cheating in the long term, and it is quite unfair if LaTeX beginners' efforts are being marked alongside the likes of egreg!) It also undermines instructors' ability to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching and their ability to identify topics which they should revisit in light of students' difficulties.

Ref: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/212411/how-to-get-default-color-of-beginblock-command.

While I realise that it is obviously very difficult to know, in many cases, whether a question is of this kind or not, I think that it would be useful to have some guidance concerning the following:

• 'red flags': features of questions which should cause one to pause and ask for clarification, or pause and examine the asker's history on the site. (The question above is the fourth question the user asked about this assignment. It seems to me that we should probably have smelt a rat slightly earlier given that all the questions concerned an 'assignment'.)
• responding to the user: a comment block? What I'm thinking of here is something to say when it has become clear that the user is using the site illegitimately.
• communication: how best to flag up the problem to other people so that the user cannot keep asking new questions until the assignment is completed by an ad hoc team from TeX SE.

Although this is the most egregious case I've seen here, it is far from being the only one. While users bear the primary responsibility for misusing the site, we are also to blame if we do not make some efforts not to allow them to do so. Obviously nothing we could do (consistent with the existence of the site) could prevent such misuse. Moreover, some things we might do to minimise it would have unacceptable costs in terms of their effects on everybody else's use of the site. But I am not at all comfortable with the way things work at present.

I am particularly concerned given that we routinely answer questions which simply post an image or state a problem and include no evidence of any effort at all on the asker's part.

I should say that I very much doubt that my view will be a popular one.

I should also make clear that my concern is with cases in which the use of TeX is part of what is being assessed. I am not at all concerned about people asking for help formatting their theses on the nocturnal habits of koala bears or the lives of cats in Norman keeps. (Unless, of course, they are also asking us to fill in the details of koalas' night time festivities.)