Now, I can understand the annoyance some people would have with a post like this:
But look at this thread. Grammanaut isn’t looking for us to hand him answers. He’s looking for suggestions on source material he should check into.
If he had posted it without mentioning he was doing research for a term paper, it would have looked like a normal OP and nobody would have known what he was doing with the information he sought. So why penalize him by a literal interpretation of a minor rule?
The right call was made. In the past, we’ve been more than willing to give people hints on how to approach their homework as long as they’ve made it clear that they’d done some work. That poster was asking us to do research and find sources for a paper they’d put off until the last minute. That’s their job, not ours.
ultrafilter and aruvqan have pretty much nailed it. Basically, we certainly want to provide help to students (and to every one, for that matter) in terms of where to find things, how to research, etc. But we’re not willing to DO the work for someone who’s supposed to be learning how to do it themselves.
The rule is deliberately broad. It was not imposed by the moderators, it was the wishes of the membership that we add a rule against homework. That way, members have a peg to hang their hats on, to say to someone, “Sorry, we don’t do your homework for you.” The goal of homework is for students to learn (gasp!) by doing it themselves.
I’ll admit that anyone who’s waited until May 28 to start doing research on a term paper due for June 2 probably has some larger academic issues. But I don’t see how being a slacker is a board offense. Nobody’s forced to answer his questions. People who don’t want to help students with their homework don’t have to.
You miss the greater issue here, which is that the point of homework is so that the student can learn how to learn – how to research for a paper, for instance – and to spoonfeed them the answers or write the paper for them defeats the entire purpose.
To support people in this means that we would be, in effect, supporting their right not to learn, to be ignorant. And we can’t be doing that.
I should add to what TubaDiva said: this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. If people want to do someone else’s homework for them, that’s pretty much their business. The purpose of the rule is NOT so that Moderators can patrol and intervene; the purpose of the rule is to support members who can respond to a request by saying, “Gee, I’d like to help, but it’s against the rules here.”
Without such a rule, a person who said, “Look it up yourself” might be considered being rude, might provoke insulting rejoinders, etc.
FWIW, I posted some Chemistry questions a couple months ago and got a decent response. The key, though, was likely that I posted my work and showed I’d already taken a stab at it and was asking where I went wrong. I got lots of help.
This place spoonfeeds people answers all the time. The only difference is that, in most cases, people don’t say whether or not the answers they require are for school. I don’t see why we should draw distinctions based on whether we know (or suspect) that the person asking the question is doing so for his or her homework. And, despite your conflation of the two, there’s quite a big difference between helping someone find sources for a paper, and actually writing it for them.
If one of my students started a thread like the one linked by the OP, i’d have no problem with it, because those are precisely the types of things i’d be happy to help the student with myself. I’ve suggested books, articles, databases, websites, and a whole bunch of other resources to individual students who are having trouble getting started on a paper. Ideally, of course, i would give the student a few starting places and tell him to try and find more resources on his own, but simply asking people for help with sources is perfectly fine. At my university, students can get very similar types of help from the research and subject librarians.
If that student came to me with those questions about sources, the only problem i’d have would be with the fact that he’s beginning a research paper 5 days before the due date. But, as Little Nemo suggests, being a slacker shouldn’t be grounds for a rules violation.
Oh, please! This place really needs to get over itself a bit sometimes.
Don’t get me wrong; i love coming here, i’ve received some extremely helpful and enlightening information in my time here, and i think this board has a bunch of very smart members. But let’s not kid ourselves that we’re some sort of cultural hall monitor responsible for policing the study habits of procrastinating college students, or that helping people with their homework constitutes some violation of the Prime Directive. That sort of hubris is pretty unbecoming.
I don’t see why this issue can’t just be a matter for each member’s personal conscience. If you want to help someone with their homework, go ahead; if you don’t then just leave it be.
If i had entered the thread linked by the OP, i would have offered some general advice about how to find the material the person was looking for, as well as a few suggestions about how to go about the search, and possibly, if anything came to mind, a book or two. None of this would have constituted “writ[ing] the paper for them.”
I think that what gets me the most about the “no homework” rule is that it’s so easy to get around that the rule becomes both silly and useless. Thinking of the essays and take-home exams that i give my students, i can think of dozens of ways they could get help on this board without ever giving away that it was for a college assignment. There are plenty of ways, for example, to ask questions about Puritan religion and social life in early Massachusetts without saying “I need help with my term paper.” Hell, just starting a GD thread about Puritans would probably get you dozens of smart and knowledgeable posts, and provide you with a bunch of citations to chase up.
Similarly with the thread linked in the OP; this place has discussed all of these issues, as well as the general subject of cover-ups and conspiracies, on numerous occasions, and if he had known the rules and started the thread in a more subtle manner he never would have been caught. It’s pointless.
Huh?
That seems to be exactly what it’s for, given that moderators do, in fact, “patrol and intervene” in such threads, often shutting them down (including the one linked by the OP).
Why not just leave people to help or not help, and make a rule that, if you decide not to help, then you’re not allowed to be rude and say “Look it up yourself”?
I mean, that level of rudeness and irrelevant discourse is generally discouraged in GQ and GD anyway, meaning that the rule is, per your explanation, designed to deal with problems that are already covered by forum rules anyway.
Your whole explanation just strikes me as bizarre.
But it seems to me that he *was *in fact asking where to find the information. He isn’t asking anyone to do the work for him. Thus by your rule its an acceptable question. Or maybe I’m missing something.
The problem seemed to me that he was trying to get the SDMB collective mind to research and synthesize for him. If he wanted advice on resources or verification that what he had already done was correct then he would have been clear. Except for the whole using another member’s screenname thing. I think.
No. No. No.
The very last thing we need is for the Dope to become Sparknotes 2.0, and have a bunch of 12-22 year olds clogging the forums asking us to do their homework for them.
I actually agree with that whole-heartedly. And i think the cast majority of the membership would also agree.
But if that’s the case, why not just leave it up to individuals whether or not to respond to the question? If the thread linked by Annie-Xmas, above, is any indication, people who just want someone else to do their work for them will learn pretty quickly that they’re not likely to find much help here. Some of the responses in that thread were very funny.
And removing the rule would also allow us to help people who just need some help getting started, or some help with a particular part of a question, or some help finding sources. As Peter Morris says, the guy in the thread linked by the OP was most definitely not asking anyone else to write his paper for him.
But, like i said above, all he needed to do in order to get around this was to be a little less honest and a little more devious in designing his question. The main thing that prevented him from getting help was not the rule itself, but the fact that his ignorance of it led him to ask his questions in a too-blatant manner.,
What’s research, (for an undergrad paper), but reading books by people who spoonfeed you facts and interpretation. That’s what research (until you get to hardcore primary source scavenging) IS. It’s easy to argue the most effective form of research, in the modern age, is precisely to go on message boards and ask. If we replied, wouldn’t he have learned how to research?