Hi. My mind was wandering recently and I came across this thought: Set up two new forums, one for Computer Problems and one for Homework Problems, with the caveat that they are for members only.
Guests will still get what guests get; however, since many people here are students or have computer issues, they’ll have an incentive to become members.
Here’s a bonus: If possible, the Computer Problems moderators can be computer experts. They can have their CVs/Resumes posted (with appropriate personal details removed), so that when they monitor the threads, they can keep an eye out for bad, i.e. malicious, advice. Potential members have the advantage of knowing that at least at the SDMB, computer advice is at least somewhat reliable.
Anyway, it’s not a perfect idea. It may not even be a good one. But there it is anyway.
Maybe I’m missing something, but since the invariable and universal reply to someone who comes into General Questions and says brightly, “Hi! I’m working on a paper for school and I need to know…” is a crusty, “Do your own damn homework”, why should we set up a whole Homework Forum? The only reason I can think of would be that it would function as a sort of Auxiliary Pit, to give all us Crusty Old Folks a chance to take “do your own damn homework” potshots at unwary posters, sort of a Shoot Yer Fish In A Barrel Here forum.
GQ already functions as a sort of de facto Homework Forum, as long as the poster can figure out how to ask the question without being too obvious that it’s for school. I’ve seen plenty of OPs go by that sounded like they might be for school, but were phrased so carefully that one didn’t like to be a jerk by confronting the poster about it.
The idea of a Computer Forum has been mooted many times, and the response is generally, “If we have a Computer Forum, then we’ll have all kinds of people coming in here asking questions about computers, and we don’t want that…” the feeling being that we might get asked things that were beyond our collective technical competence and we might give the wrong advice and somebody might sue us.
Speaking of improvements, would it be possible to install a spell-check in the reply-window? To rule out the more obvious typo’s and at least some of the odd English that we, foreigners, are prone to?
(Sorry if this has been asked before, but a search on spell-check didn’t yield any results)
That’s not a reason to not set up a homework forum. The reason to set up a homework forum is that there is apparently a demand for a place to post homework questions that might get addressed by people who know something about a subject, or where to look for it.
Why would it be an Auxiliary Pit if it is the Homework Forum? I’m skeptical that many people would visit a Homework Forum just to reply to threads with, “Go put your homework questions someplace appropriate, like a Homework Forum, jerk.”
If it serves as a tool to increase membership and therefore generate capital for making the boards run better, while at the same time giving people w/ expertise an opportunity to help those struggling with their field, I guess I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t want a homework forum. Plus, we could drop the oh-so-clever “Nod, nod; wink, wink” when someone tries to disguise a homework question.
There are already myriad computer questions floating about out there; so many that a sticky thread had to be created to deal with some of them. I don’t know what the legalities are in terms of avoiding lawsuits, or whether the risk is greater for computer questions than for any of the other questions and requests for advice on the SDMB.
The thing is that now that the SDMB is charging money for membership, offering services to encourage membership may not be such a bad idea. I don’t want to find out the hard way that an internet message board needs a critical mass to keep it interesting and active.
Perhaps a Computer Forum would not be welcome, but a Bonehead Computer Question Forum might be. A place for questions people are too afraid to ask but really want answered so they do it over a quasi-anonymous message board.
My point is that experience dictates that the overwhelming majority of Dopers who hang out in GQ feel that it’s not the SDMB’s mission to answer homework questions in the first place, let alone set up a whole separate forum just to answer homework questions that the majority of Dopers who hang out in GQ feel ought to be answered by the unfortunate homework-ee himself. The overwhelming majority of GQ Dopers feel that people ought to do their own damn homework. Including at least one GQ Mod.
Now, if you can get some kind of quorum of GQ Dopers who would volunteer to take up station at a Homework Forum, and to be civil to any and all comers, that would be fine by me, no skin off my nose. But I’d be very surprised if you did, because it’s rare to see an obvious “help me with my homework” General Question that got any kind of really helpful response. The best they ever get is usually a half-hearted, half-answer, from one of the more charitably inclined Dopers, along with a kindly meant admonishment to “do your own homework”.
So, I think that overall, sentiment on the SDMB would militate strongly against setting up any kind of “Ask Your Homework Questions Here!” forum. I think many people would join me in opining that that’s not what we’re here for. Fighting Ignorance isn’t the same thing as simply telling some high school kid, for example, What if anything did Canada do with Respect to Iraq’s Gassing of the Kurds, or doing his math for him.
As far as generating new members–how would that work? How many school-age Guests who drift in here looking for help with their term papers are going to be able to pay the $14.95 (and are going to be interested in sticking around)? Didn’t we just go through that whole enormous “I’m a student and I have no money to subscribe/Oh, yeah, well, boo hoo, why don’t you mow lawns or something?” mass convulsion?
Speaking as a member of the staff, I’d say that our general feeling is that the reasons teachers assign homework is so that the students learn something about the subject, and learn how to do research. Personally, I’m fine if a person asks for a place to start. For instance, if a student wanted to know some good books on the subject of Egyptology, I’d be perfectly OK with a post like that, especially if it was in Cafe Society. Not only would the student get some great resource ideas, other people who are interested in the subject could get some books to look up as well. However, that’s just MY view.
As for having a computer questions forum, well, frankly, there’s plenty of other message boards that specialize in that sort of thing. Plus we’re really quite big enough as it is. IF we start turning a profit, we might look into branching out into more areas, but that’s a pretty big IF.
While we were discussing subscription ideas in modmail, I voted early and often for making several forums viewable only to subscribers…namely, GD, CS, IMHO, MPSIMS, and the Pit. However, I was voted down (and I still am not over that).
There are quite a few small message boards out there that belong to the SDMB “family”. Most of them are geographically based, and others are general social forums. As far as I am aware, none is topic-based. Using that model, what would the Staff’s attitude be towards a Doper starting up his own topic-specific board ( computers, say) off the Reader’s servers, and with the appropriate disclaimers at both ends, having a link to it on the SDMB site?
Continuing the computer example, I have been to places light slashdot, linuxquestions.org, and others for help, but those places can be a bit intimidating for a person like me who, whilst not a newbie, sure ain’t a techie either. I would often feel much more comfortable throwing my computer questions at a bunch of familiar Dopers.
I guess I don’t understand the confusion between getting homework answers and getting homework help. I’ve been a student and it is my experience that a novel way of explaining a concept, a pointer to an obscure reference source, or an example of how to solve a similar problem can be very, very helpful, without just giving away the answer.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a math book that gives a simple example in the text and then gives problems with myriad curveballs and no explanation of how to handle them, nor any simple problems just to allow a student to practice. I haven’t actually mastered the basic concept, and I’m already expected to take on complications?!
When we say that GQ isn’t for homework and that people don’t feel that this isn’t a place for homework, we should first take into account that fact that when we sign up the rules state quite specifically that this place ain’t for homework. We’re not doing a thought-poll in a vacuum, and I see no reason to thing that if a forum specifically set up to help students existed, that people wouldn’t drop in just to see what’s there. I know that I would help someone with econ or psych questions, to the extent that I’m able to do so.
It certainly isn’t fair to poison the well by characterizing someone who seeks homework help as being a high-school flunkie. When I was working w/ a city engineering department, one of the engineer’s kids was given a traffic problem as a homework assignment. He wasn’t a flunkie, but why should he know how to reinvent the wheel? Giving the kid an idea how to model the problem isn’t doing the assignment for him, nor is letting him flounder and fail at a math modeling problem furthering his career. I know full-grown adults who couldn’t even begin to model the problem correctly and it is reasonable to expect some kid to do it without any help?
Real world student research works like this: Go to the library and sit at the computer. Type words into a search engine. If that fails, go ask the reference librarian. In my experience, that about sums it up for most students. Unfortunately, not all librarians & libraries are equally good and students, even college students, can hit brick walls, research-wise, when there are other roads they can take.
Like I said initially, this isn’t the greatest idea. But saying that we can’t change because this is the way we are simply isn’t an acceptable argument against change. In fact, that argument was blown out of the water with the initiation of membership fees.
I’m not suggesting that the SDMB should become a for-profit enterprise. I’m not suggesting that we should spoon feed answers to students who should be doing their own work. What I am saying is that with a fee, it seems quite possible that the SDMB will have a tougher time recruiting and keeping members. If young people come here to visit and find it interesting, that’s good. If young people come here to visit, find it interesting, and decide to become members because they have a convenient place to get new and different ways to skin a cat, metaphorically speaking, then that’s even better.
Finally, I’m sorry Lynn, but I think that it would be better to add a service than restrict forums in response to the member-guest distinction. Help with a new way to look at the Israel-Palestine conflict, for example, for a history paper, or finding non-partisan sources on urban planning for a sociology class, is something to offer that seems to be fairly unusual and of value. That’s why I mentioned the computer thing as well, though I didn’t know there were so many boards already extant for the issue. (Personally, I’d rather ask Dopers that go someplace new, but what the hey? It’s good to meet new people.)
Personally, I agree with you entirely here. There is, in fact, a big difference between helping someone with homework and doing it for them. And I have no problem with students asking for homework help on this message board. But it seems to me that the GQ forum we already have is perfect for that type of question. If someone posts “please help me understand elliptic integrals”, why does it make any difference if it’s a student looking for help with a class or an armchair mathematician who’s just curious? The answers would be the same either way.
Personally, I would welcome our new homework-doing overlords.
OK, that aside I like helping with homework. I was a teacher in grad school and really enjoyed it. I gave it up by going for the cash but still enjoy helping where I can.
People ask questions for many reasons, including homework, and under the proper circumstances, we have no problem lending a hand. We’ve always been willing to point people in the right direction, but we’re not going to do homework for others.
This has been a sore spot over the years, going back to when we had daily chats and we had students – and worse, PARENTS – who would come looking for us to answer questions, write papers, etc.
However, we do not cater to the student crowd exclusively and this is not a family-oriented or child-centric site, so anything that might open the door to anything like that is just not going to happen around here.
I think a forum exclusively set up for this sort of thing would actually be counterproductive in terms of questions and answers, as many if not most of our membership would avoid such an area. While it’s great we have some members that would be willing to help out students (and I hope you continue doing so on the board), we have just as many people that really don’t want to play, so to speak.
Got a question? Try to find a forum that’s a good fit for it. Our members will decide whether it’s appropriate or not and handle it accordingly.
We also are not in computer business, sports is not our main focus, and gaming, while an obsession with many of our members, is not our primary concern. There’s many other web sites out there where that IS their meat and they can do a far better job than we could ever attempt to do.
Thanks for that link grimpixie. But thirty minutes of trying to get E-spell to work for me left me, not only without a spellchecker, but now feeling stupid, too.
Please don’t worry about it. Thanks for being so conscientious. But around here, at least, the occasional typo or grammar error is no problem. And foreigners get extra slack anyway.
My spelling is pretty good, but when I want to spellcheck a post, I just copy it into my word processor and check it there. There might be an English word list for your own word processor. There are also many free stand-alone and web spellcheckers. Find one that suits you.
However, it’s more likely he meant “off” as in “away from” as in on his own server.