Neowin Let us do your homework


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New example:

https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=600486

It's not even a hard assignment.

I think this kind of thing is fine. They've tried thinking of creative solutions, but they're asking for any better ideas that they can work off of. I remember I once asked on this forum for suggestions for two short, foreign books with a common theme to them, so I can read them and write a comparative essay about them. I already had two books in mind, but they were much too long for me to read (I loathe reading novels), and the neowin community suggested some great ideas for me. I still had to do quite a bit of research to see what these books were about, formulate some ideas and themes, read the books and write the report.

It's topics like these that are really starting to become disgusting. It "sounds" as if they've made an effort, but rather than asking questions about what they're unsure of, they just dump the assignment on the page. Clearly some of these questions require very little research and almost no thinking (e.g. give the scientific names of two organisms), so the OP is clearly looking to plagiarize.

I think acceptable forms of asking for homework help should be as follows:

- "I have to do a report on recent astronomical events or breakthroughs, and all I can think of is China's mission to Mars announcement. Can anyone else suggest some more interesting topics that I can look into?"

- "For a project, I need to build a bridge out of popsicle sticks. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can increase the weight capacity of this bridge other than choosing a certain truss design?"

- "I don't understand the difference between a chemical change and a physical change. I know a chemical change is when the substance changes, but how can you tell when the substance has changed? Why is burning something a chemical change and melting something a physical change?"

- "If I'm given two equations, how can I find the point of intersection?"

- "I'm trying to integrate this function, but I can't seem to get past this step. What am I doing wrong?"

- "I'm trying to learn integration by substitution, but I never understand which term to substitute for. Does anyone have any tips for this?"

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I think I have asked a few questions for homework help here...and for me at least, I had tried, or was confused by the initial problem all together, and am not very social so didnt know anyone in the class, and i am the first to admit i am a procrastinator, so i am probably working on it a couple days before due where i dont have time to see the teacher :p. Either way, I have always learned better by studying solutions and looking through how the correct answer was gotten then just drilling problems (which usually just confuse me if i havent gotten it .. and if i have already gotten it, it annoys me :p)..

hmm not sure if their is an opinion on this in that...i think there is :p

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yeah...I need Neowin to solve my math homework:

If an integer n is greater than 2, then the equation a^n + b^n = c^n has no solutions in non-zero integers a, b, and c. Prove it.....(This has already been prooved).

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I noticed that there have been people signing up specifically to ask Neowin members about homework assignments? I can only guess that this is related to one school and a member relaying positive feedback on assignment help in the past from Neowin members to his/her peers.

While we won't put a stop to this practice, I can safely say that we do not intend to create a separate forum section entitled " Homework Help!" (or similar). I'm sure there are forums on the internet that cater to this and to be honest when I am looking up anything I don't understand I always check Wikipedia first.

Personally I don't think the topics are getting in the way of others, Neowin is after all tech related so helping such people is entirely up to you really, because this is a community and not a dictatorship, therefore members decide what remains active and what-not!

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While we won't put a stop to this practice, I can safely say that we do not intend to create a separate forum section entitled " Homework Help!" (or similar). I'm sure there are forums on the internet that cater to this and to be honest when I am looking up anything I don't understand I always check Wikipedia first.

There probably is but I just think the people are too lazy. They're probably reading the jokes section while you help them out which I think is why they use Neowin. Most of the questions are usually on the first page in Google but some of the them are very hard like maths (e.g x = a * 3 ^b = c(8%3) + x) which search engines usually filter out the symbols. I think those ones deserve more help.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...

Looking back through this thread, i realize that the finally word from Steve, is that we will not be closing or making it a rule that you cannot ask for homework help, however, i do still think we should make an effort to go back to the old way of just giving help so people can solve their own homework matters. The same as helping someone with an IT issue, we would ask them to check A, B and C and hopefully find out whats wrong, we should do the same for homework.

Instead of saying, the answer is 57, we should explain what they can do to find the answer themselves. This way they might have a chance to actually LEARN something for themselves.

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