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Forum Homework Policy Overview

Started by grhodes_at_work Mar 4, 2004 at 4:15 PM 9 replies 5.4k views

Original Post

Mar 4, 2004 at 4:15 PM

Hello All, I''ll get right to the point. I''ve noticed an increase lately in the number of posts that are either homework questions, or are indistinguishable from homework. I wanted to quickly review the policy for you. Here is the bottom line: 1. Homework questions are generally unacceptable in this forum. Please do not post them. 2. Homework questions that you try to fake as being legitimate game-development or non-homework questions are also unacceptable. I and the other moderators can usually tell the difference. 3. Homework questions may be closed at any time without notice. 4. Non-homework questions that cannot be distinguished from homework will be treated as if they were homework, e.g., generally unacceptable and prime candidate for closure without notice. 5. I am fairly flexible, and will allow some non-game-development threads to remain open IF the poster is VERY clear about his or her purpose for posting the question and if I believe there is at least a tangential relationship to game development. I won''t always tell you why I leave a thread open. 6. This forum, indeed this entire website, exist to support the game development community . I allow some flexibility in this forum to encourage free and diverse thinking, to allow some fun and quite interesting discussions, and to encourage collaboration. If you take advantage of this flexibility to get forum participants to do your schoolwork for you, then ultimately you are cheating yourself. You may find one day that a forum participant is hired for a job that you cannot do because you did not do the hard work to build your own problem solving skills and technical knowledge. 7. If your question even sounds like it came out of a textbook, be prepared to have the thread closed without notice. A more philosophical description of the forum policy can be found in the Forum FAQ. The FAQ also has some useful links to websites that exist to help people with homework. Please ask your homework questions there instead of here. Thank you for your time and consideration! Graham Rhodes Senior Scientist Applied Research Associates, Inc.

Cedric

Mar 4, 2004 at 7:22 PM

This might have been suggested in the past, but we could have a sticky homework thread, where homework can be posted... Though you''d still have to moderate it, and it would still waste bandwidth. Kind of like the Lounge was put in place to clean the other forums of OT posts.

C-Junkie

Mar 4, 2004 at 8:47 PM

I agree that homework should not be in this ofrum, but even homework-like questions?!

Just asking a general mathematical question can be considered homework.

I think people shold be innocent until proven guilty...

Nervo

Mar 4, 2004 at 8:51 PM

I''m guilty of sometimes posting homework questions. And I come forth with it frankly when I do. I''ll blatantly say that its a homework question, but I always showed my work and never asked for the answer, usually just a clue. But now, I guess I''ll refrain entirely from any of my physics homework questions, or calculus questions. I apologize.

grhodes_at_work

Mar 5, 2004 at 10:16 AM

quote:
Original post by C-Junkie
I agree that homework should not be in this ofrum, but even homework-like questions?!

Just asking a general mathematical question can be considered homework.

I think people shold be innocent until proven guilty...

I agree with your last sentence in general, except that its impossible to prove them guilty here.

As I said in my post, as as the Forum FAQ states, I am quite flexible on this matter! You may have noticed that a great many general discussions of math and physics have remained open. This absolutely *is* allowed! You just need to state why you''re asking, and (this is important) begin the discussion by contributing your own actual thoughts or progress on the matter----don''t just throw a random problem out there and say "discuss amongst yourselves..." Make sense?

What I do NOT want to see is posts like the following (taken directly from a website, mathgoodies.com, that has a forum dedicated to math homework help).

-----begin post-----
f(x)=6/sqrt(2-x)
-----end post-----

Yes, that is a complete post. In general, I don''t want to see any post that basically throws out an equation with the stated or implied expectation that someone will provide a solution or analysis.

*or*

-----begin post-----
A solid is generated by revolving the area bounded by the functions y=x and y=x^2 around the line y=1. Set up but do not evaluate the integral to calculate the volume of the solid.
If any one could help me with this problem it would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
-----end post-----

Any word problem that very clearly comes from a textbook or homework sheet is unacceptable.

That sort of thing just reeks of someone trying to get a quick answer to homework either because they waited till the last minute to work on it, or are just lazy, or just don''t give a damn.

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

grhodes_at_work

Mar 5, 2004 at 10:21 AM

quote:
Original post by Nervo
I''m guilty of sometimes posting homework questions. And I come forth with it frankly when I do. I''ll blatantly say that its a homework question, but I always showed my work and never asked for the answer, usually just a clue. But now, I guess I''ll refrain entirely from any of my physics homework questions, or calculus questions. I apologize.

Nervo,

You have no reason to apologize. I don''t recall if I''ve ever closed one of your homework threads, but I do know that I have left some open. I''ve done that because you followed the rules/guidelines in the FAQ. The fact that you participate in the forums for reasons other than homework also gives me confidence that you are very interested in this community and aren''t just looking to take advantage. Again, you have no reason to apologize.

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

grhodes_at_work

Mar 5, 2004 at 10:33 AM

I did a quick search on google for the phrase "math homework problems." This search revealed a few websites that are basically DEDICATED to math homework help. Here are a couple:

Math Goodies: Free Interactive Math Lessons, Homework Help , ...

That one is very nice, and has a dedicated homework forum.

Math.com - World of Math Online

Nice site, but I didn''t see a forum

Algebra Homework Help at Algebra.com

AAA Math

I know these sites aren''t necessarily as exciting as gamedev.net, but unlike gamedev.net they exist to help with math education and homework rather than game development.

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

paulecoyote

Mar 5, 2004 at 10:37 AM

Seems rather harsh, but I can see why you take that standpoint.
As long as they don't expect homework to be done for them I don't see the harm.

If a question was posed "I'm trying to learn 3D Math, and would like to know if anyone knows of any good sites that teach Matrix Manipulation" I don't see why that shouldn't be allowed.

"Whats the answer to [3 0 2] x [1 2 4]" would be unacceptable (probably on many levels) ;-)

We don't want to punish people for asking questions, even if they do seem 2nd nature to us, perhaps once upon a time you may have asked the same question when it wasn't.

Edit - Perhaps you should make new rules like this sticky?

[edited by - paulsdsrubbish on March 5, 2004 11:38:15 AM]

hlivingstone

Mar 5, 2004 at 10:50 AM

man, how do i do cout''s???? im having so much trouble and i need to write a program that calculates factorials with it! s0mb0dy hellp PLEASE!
whats up with those >>''s things anyway can i just say like "print factoral of 5"? man i need to like understand this by probably around next week if i ever want to get around to writing my game ive been thinking up, its going to be alot like metal gear solid 2.
If someone has code like this, that would be great

if you could paste it PLEAZE!!

....yeah, thats right n00bs im making fun of you! get yah homework posts outa here

grhodes_at_work

Mar 5, 2004 at 10:53 AM

quote:
Original post by paulsdsrubbish
Seems rather harsh, but I can see why you take that standpoint.
As long as they don''t expect homework to be done for them I don''t see the harm.

If you read the Forum FAQ you will see that this is allowed. My post above was deliberately harsh, but the FAQ is more definitive.

The serious problem is that if a person does not explicitly say that they only want a hint or link, SOMEONE here will often just post the whole derivation, answer, solution, whatever. Voila, instant homework answer even if you didn''t want it. Often, people will post an answer even if the original post did say a complete answer was not requested.

quote:
Original post by paulsdsrubbish
If a question was posed "I''m trying to learn 3D Math, and would like to know if anyone knows of any good sites that teach Matrix Manipulation" I don''t see why that shouldn''t be allowed.

That''s allowed, 100%. This kind of question is posted very frequently, and I don''t believe I''ve ever closed such a thread. That kind of question is something I should explicitly encourage actually.

quote:
Original post by paulsdsrubbish
We don''t want to punish people for asking questions, even if they do seem 2nd nature to us, perhaps once upon a time you may have asked the same question when it wasn''t.

This is true. Its kind of a fine line, making a decision to close or leave a thread open. Some are quite obviously textbook problems, to most anyone reading the question. Always keep in mind that this site exists, and is paid for by advertisers, etc., for the purpose of supporting the game development community. Homework and non-game-development questions in general are off topic. They''re acceptable in moderation for social aspect and for the reasons mentioned in item #6 of my original post.

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

Cyber-Ace

Mar 5, 2004 at 1:48 PM

quote:
Original post by grhodes_at_work
quote:
Original post by Nervo
I'm guilty of sometimes posting homework questions. And I come forth with it frankly when I do. I'll blatantly say that its a homework question, but I always showed my work and never asked for the answer, usually just a clue. But now, I guess I'll refrain entirely from any of my physics homework questions, or calculus questions. I apologize.

Nervo,

You have no reason to apologize. I don't recall if I've ever closed one of your homework threads, but I do know that I have left some open. I've done that because you followed the rules/guidelines in the FAQ. The fact that you participate in the forums for reasons other than homework also gives me confidence that you are very interested in this community and aren't just looking to take advantage. Again, you have no reason to apologize.

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

PWNED!

(And a bump in desquise, shh)

[edited by - Cyber-Ace on March 5, 2004 4:07:38 PM]

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