I can’t believe there is bitching going on about this. If anyone really needs the link between doing someone else’s homework and doing your own explained, you may not be ready for message boards anyway.
Finally, someone agrees with me.
As it stands, though, the problem is not doing someone else’s homework. The problem is being blatant about it. Or being popular on the board. I notice no one is up in arms about the posters posting bits of code in Anaamika’s thread on data structures and algorithms.
Popular kids skate. Whataya gonna do? Do their homework for them and hope some of their stuff rubs off on you.
Wait a minute. I thought I was like … 40 years away from that being relevant.
(Ri-i-i-i-ght)
I asked the mods about it and got a reply how that one is ok, but the one they closed (despite the fact that Reza said he checked multiple online sources for himself before asking to confirm his findings here) was beyond the pale. I couldn’t see the distinction, but it’s not my call, I guess.
Personally I think Anaamika’s thread should be legit and Reza’s threads should be too. The whole prohibition in getting “help with homework or an off board project” is so open and vague, and generally pointless, in my opinion.
shrug I never opened that thread, but ISTM (having looked at it now) it should also be closed. I think the distinction TubaDiva was trying to make earlier is not so much that Anaamika is popular but that she is a longtime poster who contributes on a variety of topics and has built up some goodwill. Reza, on the other hand, seems to be a one trick pony that contributes nothing except that his questions are occasionally interesting.
Interesting questions are worth their weight in something extremely valuable.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Speaking as someone who’s at times worked as a professional tutor, I see a huge difference between what Anaamika is doing and what Reza was doing. Anaamika wanted help with her homework. The Java language (which she was asking about) is not the primary focus of her class; data structures and algorithms are. Reza wanted someone to do the homework for him. This was just compounded by the fact that it wasn’t even his own homework, but work he is in turn doing for someone else.
If we’re going to say he’s doing something wrong, let’s at least be accurate- he said in his thread that he checked multiple sources himself and was now just confirming what he found. Whether someone believes him or not, or thinks that’s still wrong is up to the individual, but at least argue the facts as presented. His other threads were also ones where he had a couple remaining questions that he couldn’t figure out himself, so I’think it’s a bit incorrect to say he’s simply posting homework and asking people to do it for him. Those threads sparked interesting conversations about language usage.
I see little difference in someone getting info from the boards on their own assignment and someone getting info to help someone else. The rules certainly do not cut that fine distinction, and in fact only mention that we’re not here to help with your own homework. Frankly, for a board about fighting ignorance, answering these types of questions (both Reza’s and Annamika’s) are very reasonable things to be doing. I would agree that someone posting an essay question and asking someone to write it for them would be pushing it too far, but in both these cases I (obviously) don’t think it crosses the line.
Perhaps the answer is to further clarify the registration agreement to prohibit exactly what types of homework help are ok and which are not.
I seem to recall, in Reza’s flaky thread on why aren’t they using psychics to find the missing Malaysia airlines, that she insisted she’s a she.
I always picture Rza from Wu-Tang Clan…
And this is what bugs me. Even Chronos, who is not an unintelligent guy, has gotten the idea that Reza asked for homework to be done for her. My guess is that he took that from this thread, because, if you read the thread, that’s not what she claimed to have done.
We also know from previous threads that Reza is herself trying to learn English using old textbooks. Yet the mods seem to have come to conclusion that Reza is always being paid to some people’s homework and then asks the questions here and copies down the answers.
The idea that Reza was having us do her homework for her is just not borne out by the information we have.
I’m unaware of such a rule. You’d think it would have been cited, since it would clearly apply in this situation, unlike the no homework rule.
Absent a rule, finding someone’s job to be dishonest is just what I said–the mods having a personal problem with the poster’s actions.
Reza is a male. From the thread we’re discussing:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17385488&postcount=27
That’s very strange. I could have sworn he’s claimed to be female in the past.
He says he’s male here, too, FWIW.
Which is why if you review, I specifically pointed at the posters who were posting their own versions of code in Anaamika’s thread, aka, doing her homework for her. Now all she has to do is send one of them 10 dollars and suddenly the thread moves from A-OK to completely unacceptable and don’t do this again. Why should we care what machinations occur offboard?
I guess I picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue.
OK, I haven’t been following Anaamika’s thread too closely, since I know very little Java. If people in that thread are doing her work for her, then that’s a problem… But she never asked for that, so it’s not her problem.