See, some people just don’t understand where rules (and laws) come from, and that “rules” “are” not simply “rules.” It’s samclem who just swooped in and closed the thread.
There’s also the elephant in the discussion: the practicality of it all. If someone says “my paper” their thread gets canned. If someone states the same question without the magic words, as people on General Questions do several dozen times a day, they’re just doing what this message board was created for. The no-help rule in its broadest sense, even if it were just, is basically unenforceable against anyone who isn’t dumb enough to be honest. Does that mean we shouldn’t try to enforce such rules at all? No, it means we can’t attempt to enforce them strictly, or with harsh means.
As I remarked to the Staff in a slightly different context on the same topic:
Given that samclem actually provided assistance to the poster rather than slamming the door and that the “rule” is still on the books (and prominent in the memories of many verteran posters), I don’t think samclem’s closing of that thread was particularly egregious. As noted, my personal position is that we should advise newbies that we do not wish to be used as involuntary authors of homework, but that we should not be making a big deal about slamming shut such threads (or beating up the posters in those threads).
Some kid asking for a list of state capitals will be derided sufficiently without making a rule to allow official sanctions.
I’m putting my weight of opinion behind more tolerance for questions which could be homework-type questions. Especially for a growing business model, there is a very good chance that the “risk” associated with an occasional homework question leaking through is outweighed by the reward of attracting a new Member who sticks around.
FWIW I think Sam upheld the current position properly. But I advocate that the position be moved towards one of more tolerance.
I think there’s a general consensus (I haven’t heard any disagreement) that we don’t want to be bothered by kids/students asking for answers to homework. Little Nemo Example in the OP: What’s the date of the battle of Waterloo?"
And I think we’re pretty much agreed that telling people where to go (to look up the answer 
) is not unreasonable. Frankly, in answering Cecil’s mail, I often politely tell people, “it’s in any good dictionary” or “check an encyclopedia.” Agreed also, if the resources are more complicated, it might be best for them to talk to their instructor (although usually they wait until the night before the paper is due, when it’s too late to talk to the instructor.)
I think we also agree that it can be difficult to tell whether something is homework or not, and that some homework questions (especially at college level) can be interesting to the general membership. tomndebb’s Example: Why didn’t Hitler invade Switzerland? From which it flows, why not let members answer if they want?
Hence, I agree that a re-consideration of the rules is in order, and we’ll discuss among the mods.
This in itself, then, was a learning experience that will help him a great deal in later life. 
FWIW:
I’ve actually worried about this coming from the other direction - I have an english degree, but have wound up as (mainly) a math tutor. I’ve wanted to ask on the boards for peoples’ favorite math-related books/ websites for my own & my tutorees’ edification, but have always been afraid of running afoul of the no-homework rule and being chastized and ridiculed. So I too am of the opinion that more tolerance would be a good direction.
iftheresaway, I suspect that if you asked the question while providing the reasons as you did, here, you would not have a problem today with any but the most obnoxious posters (and not at all with the Mods).
We’ve always been pretty tolerant of folks looking for resources, (which implies a judgment call among the hundreds of possible resources out there), as opposed to straight up answers.
No offense meant here, but y’all are really making this more difficult than it has to be. Overthinking much?
The “no homework” rule was designed to keep people from using the Straight Dope to write their papers or take their open book tests. In the past we’ve had people actually post quiz questions on the board and ask for the answers. “Why won’t you tell me? Why can’t you answer this for me?”
Worse than that, we’ve had parents doing research for their children or writing their children’s papers for them, which is terrible. We used to get this a lot, especailly when we did chats, and I would routinely ask them, “Are you going to do this for your child for the rest of their lives? Are you going to follow along behind them, answer their questions, write their papers, wipe their . . .” For a lot of those people, the answer was “Yes.” And that is tragic.
That’s the kind of situation for which the “no homework” rule was made. It’s not our job to enable stupidity.
The Straight Dope can – and, I think should – be a resource for people who simply seek more knowledge. Sometimes this translates into learning how to research, how to look things up, how to stimulate interest and spark curiosity and send people on the quest to find things. This is what we should be doing every day. The board is filled with clever, smart, knowledgeable, experienced people who could foster these kinds of good learning experiences and I would think management would be highly supportive of that. That’s not doing someone’s homework, that’s opening a door to great adventures. I’d like to see us do more of that and there’s no reason why we can’t. The “no homework” rule does not apply there. Or shouldn’t, anyway.
Don’t pretend we’re making up some hypothetical issue here. I cited a thread in my OP as a real current example of where I felt this rule was being over-enforced. If you believe that Grammanaut’s post was a violation of the rules and deserved to be closed, then say so and defend the rule. But don’t pretend it didn’t happen.
I prefer overthinking to its opposite.
As the link given above by Annie-Xmas clearly shows, people who ask such blatant homework help questions are unlikely to receive a whole lot of useful information. And, as i’ve said before, the rule can easily be subverted by someone who is a little creative in writing their OP anyway.
Sure it’s tragic, but you’re kidding yourself if you think that the SDMB’s refusal to help will suddenly cause them to see the error of their ways, and to tell their kids to start doing their homework themselves.
I really don’t see why the Board should be the moral arbiter of someone’s parenting choices. We’ve had hundreds of threads here in the past about raising children, and if those threads demonstrate anything, it’s that people have very different ideas about what constitutes good parenting. The fact that you think some parents are making “tragic” mistakes really isn’t (or shouldn’t be) the issue here.
And have you seen the relationship threads on these message boards? Some of the advice in those threads is great (IMO), and some of it borders on the pathological. If the aim of this Board is to curtail threads where less-than-ideal social behaviors are recommended or enabled, we might as well shut down the IMHO forum altogether.
But the current system doesn’t really combat the type of stupidity that concerns you, and it also enables duplicity, because it’s quite easy to get homework help by framing your questions in a way that is less likely to arouse suspicion.
While it might not be your job to enable stupidity, i don’t see why you (the Board, that is) need to police it, either. Why not just let the members decide whether someone’s question deserves an answer or not?
If you do this, and the SDMB turns into a big Q&A free-for-all, with homework quizzes posted and answered willy-nilly, then i’ll come back and eat humble pie. But i bet that doesn’t happen.
Which is exactly what the closed thread referenced by Little Nemo could have done. There were plenty of ways to respond to that person’s questions in a manner that would have helped him get started, and also encouraged him to learn about the task of researching and writing a paper. No-one was going to write the paper for him; no-one, i’m willing to bet, was even going to type out a huge list of sources and send him away with that. We could have given him some starting points, and some suggestions for research strategies. And even if he did receive specific book or article suggestions, so what? He still has to go off and read the things in order to do his paper.
And yet, in the very thread that inspired Little Nemo, the “no homework” rule was applied, even when the person in question was not simply asking people to do his homework for him.
The example given is actually a bad one.
Samclem did exactly what we expect him to do – it’s one person to a screen name, no sharing.
He actually went above the call of duty by actually helping the guy. So again, not a good example.
So just what the heck do you want here besides complaint?
Are you being intentionally disingenuous, or have you not actually read samclem’s response in the other thread? Despite your attempt to reduce it to the question of screen names, the fact is that it was primarily about the issue of homework, as the responses in this thread clearly indicate.
While samclem did note the issue of screen names, the vast bulk of his response was related to the issue of homework, to wit:
Bolding mine.
If it was really just about screen names, he should have done what every moderator does when someone shares a screen name: said “No sharing allowed. I’ll close this and you can open a new thread under your own name.” But he specifically raised the issue of not doing someone else’s work, and went into a rather extended explanation about what level of help the person could expect to receive.
It’s funny, now that your pat explanations about the homework issue have been challenged, that you suddenly find the need to make the whole issue about the person’s use of a screen name. Are you so desperate not to have your rules even questioned or discussed that you resort to misdirection and obfuscation?
Well, considering that the thread was opened precisely to discuss the homework rule, and whether it should be changed, why the hell are you surprised that i am addressing this topic in this thread? Is the mere fact that i disagree with you about this sufficient grounds to accuse me of simply wanting to “complaint”?
Once again, i’m completely amazed at how you attribute just about any challenge to the way things are around here as some sort of unreasonable and personal attack on you and your little fiefdom. You really are a piece of work. I’m bowing out of this thread, before i say something inappropriate for the forum.
The way I read it, posting using SO’s account was an accident. It looks like he (or is it she) created an account to use, but was mistakenly logged on to the wrong account when he posted.
This has happened many times before. It’s not ever been a subject for rebuke, as far as I know.
case in point here : Voldemort Actor Announced - Casting Spoilers, of course - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
You wanna chastise matt_mcl and **hamish **for this?
But Sam still helped him out, no?
I think the cases of potential abuse are fairly easy to spot – and the opportunities to make the world a little less ignorant are also apparent as well. And I think that those opportunities can exist in the same place as our “we don’t do your homework for you” rule.
No offense was intended, not from Sam and not from me.
I don’t think anyone has suggested that Sam’s response was offensive. And I’m not suggesting that a “no homework” rule doesn’t exist and Sam didn’t have cause to close Grammanaut’s thread under that rule. I was just raising the issue of whether such a rule is necessary and whether similar future situations might be handled differently.
As per Dex’s reply somewhere above, I think the Mods/Admins are still talking about this. We move kinda slowly, but we ultimately get around to it. By this, I mean expect some resolution in the next week or so. Is that sufficient?
While I can’t promise anything, I think we’ll have a resolution to the problem that will make things easier. OK?
I don’t know, I think it may be worth it to reword the rule, but it could lose some potency if people find loopholes in it.
The rule could easily be changed to “We will not spoonfeed you answers to your homework. At least meet us halfway here and attempt it yourself.”
I think a good while ago one of the members posited a chemistry or physics question with regards to heat (or something). He posted the problem, basically said “Okay, guys, look, I’ve tried everything <list and description of everything they did> and I’m at a loss. What am I missing here?” And everyone helped.
I wouldn’t actually mind the rule being changed to allow for hints though, sometimes you just can’t find how to start and a quick hint: remember to factor (or something) could do wonders and allow them to blaze through the problem, so long as the poster doesn’t make a habit of it.
I do have a question about the rule though (not that I need it as of now, summer and all for me):
What if I want to ask the guys in, say, the game room what they feel the problems are in the game industry in order to get a “popular opinion from the SDMB” for a report? Is that “help” or is that sort of poll allowed. I’m not asking for help, and it would just be raw data that I would synthesize into a paper.
Another (this one does apply to me though, so i guess I’m asking permission here)
What about asking if people off-hand know of any good websites for reviewing math? I have a placement exam in two weeks, but I’ve been out of a math class for a year, I don’t want to be placed to low and then be bored by the time I remember everything so I’d like to be placed in a class that actually challenges my (recovered) knowledge. But so far all the sites I’ve seen are basically online textbooks, minus the problems. I sort of like interactiveish things like problems so i can check to see if I can actually do it, instead of just reading about it. Would asking (probably in MPSIMS) for good websites, or even if anyone has any good review problems they could give me out of line and “homework help” or is that allowed?
If we have a job, isn’t it to fight ignorance? I suppose we might make someone a little more ignorant in research techniques, but we would make them a lot less ignorant by giving them quality resources to do their own learning from.
“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.” We shouldn’t give out fishes, but we should be free to teach someone how to fish.
The rule is
To me, “ask other members to do your homework” is emphatically not the same as “ask other members to show you how to do your own homework.” One it tutoring, the other is cheating, an there’s a pretty substantial (if fuzzy-at-the-edges) line between the two.
That would be the “please do not ask other members to… provide input for your article, paper, or other off-board project” part of the rule, although, of course, you could “obtain prior permission from a moderator or administrator.”
I guess I don’t see how that could possibly be “ask[ing] other members to do your homework.”
IANAM and stuff, but these all seem crystal clear to me.