Timeline for Bite-sizing homework
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 16, 2014 at 19:12 | comment | added | user10851 | Really the issue is we have 3 requirements: (1) conceptual, (2) show what you did, and (3) we don't check your work. In theory (3) is subsumed by (1), but it's a bit of a leap, which is why we moved (3) from an obscure location in the meta post to the block at the top. Still, it only explicitly appears there. | |
| Jul 15, 2014 at 20:10 | comment | added | David Z Mod | @Jim yeah, or color it red, or make a two-item bulleted list... any of various ways to improve the visibility. But I think no matter how we phrase/format the close reason, a lot of people just will not read it properly. I think the only foolproof way to get them to pay attention to both requirements is to prevent them from getting any help (i.e. keep the question on hold) until both requirements are satisfied. | |
| Jul 15, 2014 at 20:08 | comment | added | David Z Mod | @Kyle (3 comments up) I think those askers get hung up on the "show your work" requirement and ignore the other one. Probably because most physics sites have some similar requirement about showing your work for a homework problem, so askers know to expect it. The "ask about a specific physics concept" requirement is unique to us, AFAIK. | |
| Jul 15, 2014 at 12:50 | comment | added | Jim | Perhaps we should bold, underline, italicize, and put between exclamation marks the "and"? It is a logical and. Homework question about a specific physics concept are just as off topic without showing work as those that show work without being about a specific concept. | |
| Jul 15, 2014 at 5:36 | comment | added | Brandon Enright | @Kyle I think I'm in agreement with you. The "show your work part" seems to encourage people to post "please check my work" type questions. We (rightly in my opinion) close tons of homework questions that have work. | |
| Jul 15, 2014 at 4:21 | comment | added | Kyle Oman | @DavidZ I'm not entirely convinced. "My question asks specifically about the angular momentum of this pendulum and why I don't get 4.3325s for the period." Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit or imagining things, my impression is that the most frequent edit to homework questions I see in the re-open queue is a work through of the problem added, and "sorry I didn't show my work before, where is my mistake?" | |
| Jul 15, 2014 at 3:24 | comment | added | David Z Mod | @Kyle it says "ask about a specific physics concept and show your work." Of course if you follow half of the stated close reason blindly, it won't help. If you follow both parts, then the question should be reasonably close to okay. | |
| Jul 15, 2014 at 2:59 | comment | added | Kyle Oman | @DavidZ My problem with it is that it says "show your work" (to paraphrase part of it), but if you follow that blindly without reading the meta post it doesn't help, which I've noticed has come up as a point of confusion/frustration once or twice. | |
| Jul 15, 2014 at 2:34 | comment | added | user10851 | Ah that close reason - so many person hours went into crafting it, where we tried to convey the most important points succinctly enough to actually be read. I'm not saying it can't be improved, but I remember running into tradeoffs between corner-case completeness vs. emphasis and clarity for common cases. | |
| Jul 15, 2014 at 1:30 | comment | added | David Z Mod | I agree that this could be better clarified, but I think the place to do it is in the meta post on the homework policy, not in the close reason itself. (This is exactly the reason that ask about a specific physics concept is bolded.) | |
| Jul 14, 2014 at 23:54 | history | answered | Kyle Oman | CC BY-SA 3.0 |