Old Sores and Cheating at Homework

[Dusky]

Ok, I've been here a little while now and I can see some patterns emerging.

 

Let me tell you a story:  For a number of years I worked at a certain place where it became a little local game to ask a question to which probably everyone present knew the answer and see who wasn't paying attention enough as to answer it.  If you did, you were "got" and much derision followed.  If you were a Delta Rat in the early nineties you might know what I mean.  Do I detect that the "tasty, tasty" people, the "singing cherry" people are trying to develop this rather childish strain of personal satisfaction?

 

AB Ed, is there, or could there be a policy for binning questions that come out more often than Graham Norton?

 

The other thing that glares at me is those questions that are clearly cribbed verbatim from set homework or exam papers (for example: "what does "xxx" mean in the following passage...).  I'm afraid I can't even award points for initiative with those.  Obviously the site is here for sharing knowledge but I see several of these that shouldn't be rewarded with the facility of having other people do your homework for you.

 

Any views?

[Lindy Loo]

Hi Dusky, in answer to the second part of you question....

If you are refering to the questions asked by kjc0123, s/he is Korean and is learning English from books. Sometime ago a question was asked about the 'homework' posts from kjc0123, and s/he replied with an explaination.

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Search/Question73801-18.asp?Page=1&SearchText=kjc0123

I hope this link works, but if not go to ABank home page and 'search this site' for kjc0123. There are only 2 questions (its the second one). Scroll down to the last answer..... hope this clarifies things.

 

[AB Editor]

Dusky - thanks for taking the time to set out your thoughts and questions. The "tasty, tasty" phenomenon (there are others, believe me!) is a result of the high placing we get on search engines such as Google. Same goes for quizzes which flourish briefly -- but can make areas of the site look very repetitive while they're still going.

New users arrive and post a question rather than searching the site -- understandable -- without always getting the 'Your question may have been answered before' message. That little trick doesn't work as effectively as we would like, but will take some time to resolve, say the techies. So binning the multiple questions would mean binning new users, which doesn't seem fair on them, or the ethos of the site.

(It's worth noting that some of the more recognisable 'regulars' on TheAnswerbank arrived here asking "duplicate" questions from quizzes or elsewhere, liked what they found and stayed here!)

Your second point, about the homework questions: point taken, but we can never be certain what is and isn't a cheeky homework request. (Lindy Loo - good example.) As with the tasty tasty/ sugar pink palace/ type questions, I suggest that if you don't like the look of a question, ignore it and move on.

[Lindy Loo]

Thank you AB editor for the compliment!

[Dusky]

Many thanks, both.

[IndieSinger]

Hi Dusky. Whilst I realise they can be annoying for some, I have no qualms with homework questions. This is a 'Question & Answer' site only. People ask questions, other people provide answers - the reasoning behind asking the question is immaterial (AB Editor - why do we need to distinguish between what is, and what is not, a "cheeky homework request"?) If people are against helping others do their homework via this site, then as the AB Editor suggests - ignore it and let someone else do it.

[AB Editor]

"AB Editor - why do we need to distinguish between what is, and what is not, a "cheeky homework request"?" -- point taken, IndieSinger.