Is it Homework?

[sparkz_alot]

Is it just me, or is there more and more "homework" showing up in "General Coding Help"?  I only ask, because it impacts on how I feel I should respond.  Looking at some recent posts, they are less questions then they are instructions that a student should follow   .  I suppose I am looking for some guidance from the mods as to just how in depth our responses should be.  For instance, should we ever supply a complete solutions, just the very minimum of information or is it an arbitrary thing.  Thanks.

[micseydel]

Use your best judgment. I tend to err on the side of it probably being homework. You're welcome to report it with the "other" option and say you think it should be moved.

[snippsat]

Do of course see that there are several post that have "homework" all written over it,
but soon get noisy if gone use time to ask if it's homework then if get answer move thread.

Most of us are not easily fooled
so that we just solve the task in these thread anyway.

[nilamo]

I feel like the easy way to tell the difference is simply asking to see what they've tried so far. If their reply is basically:

def MyFunction():
    # your code here

it's probably homework. It seems like the vast majority of homework users put almost zero effort in.

[Larz60+]

Often accompanied with 'my assignment is'

[micseydel]

Or "your task is..."

[sparkz_alot]

Thanks all for the input, appreciate it

[Ofnuts]

As a mod I like the threads to be cleanly classified. If it looks too much like homework, I'll move it to the homework section. Users can always complain in case of mistakes....

[metulburr]

its a dead give away when you give them a response, and they say something like they "have to" use a certain tool, or method. Or they cant do it like that, etc.

Or another is they are urgently trying to get it done by X time. (they always seem to wait for the last day)

I instantly get a red flag up if they also say something like they want to know how to do it like this and that method. Most of the time they are not that slick though.

We have no problem users reporting posts to have more people take a look at it. Have at it.

[nilamo]

I think our approach going forward should be similar to this post: 

But how do I create a counter in a loop?

loopcounter=0
while looping:
   # do loop stuff
   # ...
   loopcounter+=1 # increment counter

# here the loop had ended
print 'Times looped:', loopcounter

That is to say, *technically* helping, but in a way that either doesn't really fit with what they're doing, or will be big red flags to their professor that they didn't do it themselves (like generators or nested list comprehensions).  That way they have a small little thread to help them keep going, but they still need to figure out themselves how to actually modify it so it's usable for their situation.