I'd like to propose an addition to the questions How to ask a homework question? based on the following observation. Most questions that are in fact homework questions are copied verbatim from the original text. Shouldn't it be standard procedure in almost any medium to -quote- the copy?
For example, some questions go like this:
For any $x$, show that $f(x) = g(x)$.
The natural disgruntlement that is often commented on ("Why are you telling us to do this? Did you have a question?") could be avoided if the question were treated as a copy and quoted:
For any $x$, show that $f(x) = g(x)$.
That would sidestep all sorts of common misunderstandings and complaints.
The major difficulty I see with this is that those who write questions like this don't care about formatting it for the community standards anyway. But I thought the connection with copying and plagiarism would be more convincing to newcomers/homework leeches to teach them to quote would be more successful than trying to teach them to use the homework tag.
:). Please consider adding this to that answer with an appropriate topic heading! Note that I however agrees with what Arturo wrote: quoting the exact homework question should be done in addition to, not in place of the other guidelines. $\endgroup$:)What I meant to say is that I started a template for the FAQ entry which we should fill in with more information, like your contribution above. I should hope we don't need to provide Mad-Lib style templates for question askers in general! $\endgroup$