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Comments on The homework dumps are coming - how about a network-wide policy?

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The homework dumps are coming - how about a network-wide policy?

+10
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I'm starting to see the first signs of the inevitable "homework dumps" on Software Development as the site is gaining traffic a bit. The criteria for a homework dump is roughly:

  • A raw copy/paste of a school assignment. It is not necessarily even asking a question, it could as well be a work order: "your task is to-...".
  • There is no effort or background research at all made by the OP.
  • The OP is unresponsive to any comments or feedback, they just want their homework done by someone else.

Dropping your homework as-is on top of unpaid volunteers and expecting them to do it for you free of charge is of course terribly rude and thereby violates our "be nice" Code of Conduct.

These are a problem & a constant source for conflicts over at SE - they never managed to solve the problem. So I was hoping we could deal with them more sternly than they do, because simply closing & deleting the questions isn't working out very well. They never managed to get the word out that "posting your homework on site x will get you banned". (Even though this ultimately happens because of various secret algorithms looking at new question reception.)

I was about to propose on Software Dev that we deal with these by letting the moderators or even trusted users hand out 1 week ban from the site, as a first reprimand, to signal that this behavior is absolutely not ok.

Then I realized that this will be just as big a problem on the other technical/scientific communities, in particularly Mathematics, Physics and Electrical Engineering. It would be great if we could moderate these consistently across all sites. So how about coming up with a network-wide moderation policy for how to deal with "homework dumps"?

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General (1 comment)
Do we need a policy about this? (3 comments)
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+14
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Speaking personally, not for the team: I don't think we should impose a network-wide policy, but I do think we should work out a policy draft that communities can adopt or adapt.

We don't know what kinds of communities we'll ultimately attract here. Some might be more interested in mentoring, coaching, or basic questions than others. Sometimes the lines around "homework" are fuzzy. I therefore don't think we want to impose a one-size-fits-all policy.

However, many communities, both ones already here and ones in the future, will see people trying to get answers to their homework questions. We should help them, rather than expecting each community to work out its rules on its own. The ideal outcome, in my opinion, would be a policy resource for communities, who can then decide to turn it on as-is, adjust it, or omit it.

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1 comment thread

Homework (2 comments)
Homework
Lundin‭ wrote over 3 years ago

This was specifically about "raw" copy/paste dumps. There's no grey area and I don't see how these could ever be considered good or on-topic anywhere, short of someone starting a "homwork for free" community.

Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 3 years ago

That's true for "homework problem sets", but sometimes homework is in the form of questions to be answered with words. For example, "when should you use an interface versus class inheritance?" is one I've seen. Granted the homework form might also contain instructions ("be sure to address..."). But this is why I said the lines can be a little fuzzy; some cases are blatant but maybe not all. I thought you were looking for a general homework policy; did you only mean blatant?