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refering to https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/200528/how-to-copy-the-lines-in-multiple-files-between-two-given-dates and https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/200467/i-will-use-switch-statement.

I was wondering, shouldn't we add a new close reason : homework ?

This would generate a comment like :

Stackexchange is not a homework site, we might answer your question providing you show us what you have tried. Please edit your question with you personal research.

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I would think not. We don't want to discourage people from asking for help with their homework, per se.

Users that are seeking help with their homework should be welcomed to the SE sites, rather we want to discourage them from simply dumping their assignments here, and expecting users to provide them a solution.

For this we can use custom comments as needed.

BTW, if you find yourself having to leave the same comments over and over, I'd encourage you to checkout the many extensions to Chrome and Firefox that provide these facilities within your browser.

For canned comments I use this:

This extension gives you an extra link on every SE page titled "auto" next to the comment areas that you can click when you want to use one of your custom comments. You can even customize the phrasing of comments and add your own.

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  • Good advice. It does seem like we got a flood of people dumping homework assignments here the last week or so.
    – jordanm
    May 6, 2015 at 13:06
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This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful (click again to undo)

Lazy homework questions meet these criteria. So use the tool for which the text above is the tooltip: downvote.

The fact that a question may be homework is not relevant to determining whether it is (usefully) answerable. The point of closure is to get rid of unanswerable questions. Homework questions are not intrinsically unanswerable, so we should not close questions on this basis.

In addition, it's impossible to tell homework questions in general. Having constraining homework policies is only good for generating arguments about something is homework. (“We won't do your homework.” “But it isn't homework! I'm trying to do …” “Who are you kidding? I can tell it's homework.” “What are you on? I tell you it isn't!” “Nuh huh.” “Uh huh.” …)

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  • 1
    Not a lot of point in downvoting if it's for a 1 point user. Chances are they are not interested in community and just want a quick way out of having to do any work. Nov 18, 2015 at 9:06
  • @roaima Downvoting lazy questions does serve several purposes. After a few downvoted questions, it limits the rate at which the account can ask questions (with some heuristics to detect when the same person tries to create another account). Questions scoring ≤-4 are omitted from the front page. It also serves as a warning to people browsing question lists that the question is probably not worth bothering with. Nov 18, 2015 at 12:18
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I don't care if a question is homework or not. What I care is whether the question is good, well thought out, shows a decent amount of research and context and is generally answerable.

I object to people asking me to do their work for them, and I don't care whether it's homework, work work or anything else.

IF a question is unclear or generally poor quality - tools exist for dealing with that. If it isn't, then ... leave it be.

Stack Exchange is all about making a sort of mega FAQ - supplicants getting their questions answered is rather a beneficial side effect of the process of collating questions and their answers.

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Once upon a time, this existed on SE.

After much debate, it was retired. Please see this for more detail.

I see your view point and have commented on questions that smell like homework; however, we need to close poorly written questions and make sure that whenever we answer it is "why not just how".

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