Beginner -> "homework / classroom exercises"

[imi]

Hi,

would it be a good idea to change the "Beginner" forum into "Homework / Exercises"?

From observing the past weeks, I'd say that Beginners don't really care to use either Beginner, General C++ or any of the platform specifics for beginner's questions.

As I observed it, that's not because they have a wrong picture about their skill, but rather they have questions not related to "beginners". Instead, there seem to be a very large part of the beginners who want to discuss their homework lessons.

So IMHO, by changing "Beginner" to "Homework / Exercises", this would help to bundle topics more closely. (Idea is, as always, to reduce noise for people not interested in homework lessons).


Ciao, Imi.

[chrisname]

But most of us would ignore that forum, so they'd just find the other forums and start posting there instead and we'd have the same problem...

I like the idea but I don't think it would work. I wish there was some way of bottlenecking the amount of homework questions... perhaps we could get a lexical analyser to check every post and determine where it's a homework question or not.

[imi]

Well, that assumes also that pupils have evil intents and just want to get their stuff through, no matter what. I would not hesitate to attribute this to commercial spammers, but I don't think its true for many studends or pupils. I rather think that they just don't know where to post, as "Beginners" is not really their problem.

Beside, the "READ THIS FIRST" - posts could be much more tailored on such a forum category. (You know what I mean.. stating things like "We don't do you work, but we may help to turn you into the right direction")

Ciao, Imi.

[Bazzy]

There's nothing wrong in asking help for homework, the problem is when people want the solution for their homework or worse when they just copy-paste the question of their exercise

[chrisname]

That's who I was talking about.

[Bazzy]

Removing threads with the word "homework" in them would remove posts from who asks "I have this homework, can you help?" and "PLZ me haz homework gimme solution :(" but not who says "Write a program that displays 'hello world' "
So this won't be a good solution

[imi]

There's nothing wrong in asking help for homework, the problem is when people want the solution for their homework or worse when they just copy-paste the question of their exercise

I never suggested trying to ban homework questions. I suggest to sort messages better. With the same argument, you could say "There is nothing wrong in asking beginner questions, so lets put 'Beginner' and 'General' forum topics together." (you didn't say this, just an example).

My observation was just, that at there is a big group of postings which are cross-category: Homework questions, and IMHO it is bigger that the current separation "Beginner" and "General". The reasons for giving these an extra category would be the same as for giving "Beginner" an extra category, only it would make more sense.


About the "gimme answer" postings: I am still believing, that many of these would post in more adequate way if directed better. Most of the posters are new to this forum (and probably very young with few overall forum-experience). I don't think they post in this pesky style because they are inherently bad and ill-mannered. The post just reflect the minimum amount of work for them. A special category could include better "How to get better answers to your homework question?" stickies and maybe even a small hint in the edit screen like "Tip: Don't post your query only. Post what you've done too.".

This may convert some unwanted "HELP! NOW!" in fruitfull helping postings.

Ciao, Imi.