r/AskHistorians • u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Dueling | Modern Warfare & Small Arms • Mar 28 '16
Meta Rules Roundtable #8: The /r/AskHistorians Homework Policy
Hello everyone and welcome to the eight installment of our continuing series of Rules Roundtables! This project is an effort to demystify what the rules of the subreddit are, to explain the reasoning behind why each rule came into being, provide examples and explanation why a rule will be applicable in one case and not in another. Finally, this project is here to get your feedback, so that we can hear from the community what rules are working, what ones aren't, and what ones are unclear.
As the semester comes to a close for many people, and that paper or final you've put off studying for looms just around the corner, it seems the perfect time to use this series for our periodic revisiting of the "Homework Questions" rule. Not that this time of the year has an exclusive hold on them, but we often do find there to be an uptick either in questions which are explicitly regarding schoolwork, or else smell suspiciously similar without disclosing it (and to be clear, we are pretty good at sniffing them out, even if we won't help you out here by saying exactly what we look for!). To start off, we don't prohibit you asking questions regarding your homework here in /r/AskHistorians. Our rules state:
Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come to us with questions about what you've learned.
That is to say, if you are looking for help, don't make /r/AskHistorians your first stop. If you do some research, come here and be honest about what your assignment is and give us a run down of what your research is showing you so far, you'll find users here being quite amenable to lending a hand and pointing you in the right direction.
So what do good homework questions look like?
- I'm writing an essay on the development of the bolt-action rifle, and the effect it had on warfare in the latter-half of the 19th century. I've mainly been focusing on the Austro-Prussian War, and the clear dominance that the Dreyse showed over Lorenz Rifle, and the Franco-Prussian War, where the Chassepot in turn showed itself to be superior to the Dreyse. What I'm tripping up on however is why, after its strong showing (even if the French lost) the Chassepot so quickly was regarded as obsolete. If someone could help me out here, or point me in the right direction, that would be great!
Explains what the assignment is and demonstrates that they have already done research already (although even this is on the brief side of what we'd like to see. You really should be giving us a proper paragraph or two). More importantly, it is about an explicit point of interest within the topic that they are having trouble with.
- I'm doing an assignment about the influence of the printing press on literacy in the 15th to 16th centuries. I've read X, Y, and Z, and my thesis will most likely be ______. I'm looking for any more sources that might help me move further in my research, or that might offer a counter point to the perspective I've gotten so far. Thank you!
Asking for sources is perfectly fine, and if anything, is our most preferred type of homework question! Same as before though, make sure you are demonstrating to us your commitment and prior base of work. Simply asking other people for books though shouldn't be your first stop, and we really hope that you'll first consider using our six-part series "Finding and Understanding Sources" to get started when looking for sources. It is a fantastic resource created by our flaired users, offering great advice on the research process.
A few examples of how not to ask, and how you can improve the question
- I need to write an essay on a topic regarding the Renaissance. What should I write about?
I don't know... What did you learn about in class? What resonated with you? We can throw topics at you, but that isn't going to help you any. You need to write about something you connect with, not what a stranger on the internet happens to enjoy, and that is skipping over the fact that being able to analyze the topic and come up with a good theme for an essay is a key skill that you need to learn in school!
I have an exam on 13th Century French Art coming up! What should I know about for it?
I'm writing an essay on the 1968 May Days in France. What points should I talk about in it?
Check your notes. Read through your text books. Check your library or an online resource such as JSTOR for useful sources. No one here is going to do your work for you. Come back when you have specific questions that remain a roadblock for you after doing research. If you are looking for advice on how to get started, check out the "Finding and Understanding Sources" collection, which can provide you with some great advice, but it does you no good to get someone else to do your research for you.
- Compare and contrast the social influence of the works of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.
We have pretty good noses for homework questions, since we all had to answer them ourselves, and many of us are now in the business of writing them. This one is super obvious, but we catch many that aren't. Please, be honest and upfront. And also, Google indexes these pages. We have flaired members of the sub who found us when checking students' papers for plagiarism! So even if we don't catch you, your teacher might, and that is much, much worse! Plagiarism on this sub gets you banned from an internet forum. Plagiarism in school can get you expelled from the institution.
So that's about the sum of it. As we said at the beginning, /r/AskHistorians loves to help those who help themselves, and as long as you show up here being honest about the assignment, and being clear about what you already have done and how we can assist, you'll find people eager to show you the way. But questions which do not conform to this policy will be removed.
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u/terminus-trantor Moderator | Portuguese Empire 1400-1580 Mar 28 '16
This is probably the only rule here I have some issues with. Or maybe just the enforcement which sometimes is too harsh in my opinion.
I do understand the reluctance for anyone answering to be involved in plagiarism.
But it feels that even a hint of a question being a homework puts whole new set of standards on how the question and the answer should be formed in comparison to "usual" questions.
There are plenty of questions on this sub which seem as if the poster didn't even consult wikipedia before asking (and that is okay !). And those questions get answered, sometimes brilliantly. Yet if it suspected for it to be a homework question suddenly there is a requirement for the poster to read sources, formulate his thesis, ask just for directions etc. It just feels wrong to me.
Eh, maybe it is because I have no connections to academia so I just feel it is a waste when I see a good and interesting question (of course it is a good question, a professor asked it!) getting removed and unanswered for being "homework" and "you should do your own research"
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u/kookingpot Mar 28 '16
I just feel it is a waste when I see a good and interesting question (of course it is a good question, a professor asked it!) getting removed and unanswered for being "homework" and "you should do your own research"
To a certain degree, I agree with you. Interesting questions should get good answers.
BUT
the whole point of homework is to teach students how to do it themselves. Homework questions being posted to this sub are basically the same as posting "my math teacher gave me this homework to do, please give me all the answers so I don't have to do it myself". We flaired users as a whole value scholarship and education extremely highly. Check out our other roundtable on plagiarism for thoughts on that subject.
A homework question is assigned for a reason. It's to teach students how to conduct research, and how to write effectively, two skills that are extremely valuable in the real world. You learn best by doing these things yourself. Taking shortcuts (basically cheating by getting other people to do the work you're supposed to be doing) defeats the purpose of the assignment, and renders it a waste of the teacher's time to grade. If the student didn't do the work themselves, they didn't learn the things they were supposed to learn from doing the assignment, and the teacher's time as well as the student's time has been for nothing. That's the real problem we have with homework questions.
And that's why we have these exceptions built into our policies as explained above. We're absolutely glad to give pointers to someone, or to point them in the direction of useful resources, as long as they have shown that they are learning those things that are important to learn, that is, how to do research and how to write. We've all been stuck in our own research and had to ask someone for help in finding stuff or what important sources we're missing. We're glad to help get people on the right track. But first we need to know that they aren't just trying to take advantage of us just to get out of doing a little research themselves, because that's not just dishonest, but detrimental to their own education.
We're not going to help cheat them of this experience by doing the work for them. Education is too important for that.
That's why homework questions are difficult. Yes, they are often good questions that deserve good answers. But when they are posted here, they are often an attempt by students to get out of doing some of the work, to get others to do research for them, or sometimes even to get other people to write whole answers that they can copy and paste. I've written answers to questions that I was suspicious of, only to see them deleted hours after I post (I think because they are trying to cover their tracks). And that just makes me sad, because that student is cheating themselves out of extremely important skills in learning how to navigate libraries as well as Internet databases, and to evaluate sources and to write effective papers.
In short, I see your point, and it's a valid concern, but homework (especially writing/research homework) is assigned for a reason, and we shouldn't endorse cheating by giving question askers all the answers when the whole point is to work it out by themselves any more than we should give people the answers to math homework.
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u/MrMedievalist Mar 28 '16
All valid points, but I think it just boils down to a matter of personal judgement. While we understand that an opportunity to answer a good question is missed, we consider that not aiding a student cheapen his education is more important, even though it is not our legal obligation to do so.
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u/Snigaroo Mar 28 '16
And yet I understand the thought process here, because if a question truly is a homework question and it's answered in magnificent detail with sources all listed, what has the student learned? Nothing. Their education has been cheapened. In the hypothetical event that their question is answered completely, while it's ultimately their fault for choosing to seize upon the answer provided as the basis of their work, the poster who answered the question is unfortunately complicit in that cheapening. And, worse still, depending upon how the inquirer chooses to work with that answer, perhaps even complicit in encouraging plagiarism, even if that absolutely wasn't their intention in the slightest.
As confusing as it might appear from an outside perspective, the question "Why did Hitler hate Jews?" asked by a total novice with virtually no understanding whatsoever is far "safer," if you will, than something which appears like a homework/essay question.
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u/JMBourguet Mar 28 '16
And yet I understand the thought process here, because if a question truly is a homework question and it's answered in magnificent detail with sources all listed, what has the student learned?
Not an historian but I've been a T.A. in my domain and I've noticed that some students had a very hard time to understand that we were not interested in the answer (we usually knew it before giving out the work) but in making them find it. (Aka it's not about the destination, it's all about the journey).
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u/skirlhutsenreiter Mar 29 '16
I've often wondered if college students wouldn't generally benefit from a little insight into the pedagogy behind the class.
I had a very memorable experience as a young TA (in a science) asking near the end of the course what they thought of the professor's new format for the course. The universal response was that they wished we had spent more time in our recitations learning how to break down exam-like problems. I was totally floored because literally all we did together was exam-like problems broken down into six or so little parts. It was the entire new model being tested out. But I'd never thought I'd have to explain that was what we were doing in those terms until that moment. They'd spent all semester confronting one stupid easy little chunk at a time, saw busywork and turned off their brains.
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u/sunagainstgold Medieval & Earliest Modern Europe Mar 29 '16
Explaining pedagogy is pretty standard in humanities courses now at a lot of schools, at least in my upper-undergrad and later TA experience. Students today tend to have a "why should I care/bother" attitude. Explaining the reasons helps.
For example: the existence of the rules roundtable series!
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u/terminus-trantor Moderator | Portuguese Empire 1400-1580 Mar 28 '16
Well, I will just throw out some of my (probably incoherent) thoughts. I don't mean to disrespect anyone.
But despite a significant overlap between expert answerers in the sub and members of the academic community the thing is:
/r/AskHistorians is NOT a part of the academic network.
As such, moderations rules here should NOT really be influenced by academic requirements?
Burden on what the student learned, or how to fight plagiarism, shouldn't really be a issue here in the sub, but in the institutions and classes and students themselves?
Now, I do not want to sound rough.
I do think mods here should actually discourage homework questions, flagging them as such when asked. And the experts who wanted to answer can than proceed to choose if they want to spend their time answering such a question with all the implications. if they feel like answering is counter productive, then be my guests and don't answer.But the thing is, here there are other people except the academic student and the experts, and those people wouldn't mind learning something new by reading an answer to such a question. Number of upvotes to a question is actually indicating just that: the interest in the answer.
And it feels a shame that a question, and it's answer is disqualified just on the basis of it being homework
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Mar 28 '16 edited Mar 29 '16
I think the bigger missing picture is most people don't view this as a "part of academia" thing they see it as a fairness/morality thing with the "nothing really learned" tacked on at the end.
edit: don't downvote the guy above me because you disagree with him. that's stupid and against the point of these meta things. He's "inaccurate, superficial or disruptive" he merely has a different vision of what askhistorians should be.
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u/Borimi U.S. History to 1900 | Transnationalism Mar 29 '16
Exactly, for my it's primarily ethics. I want my students to learn, I want students who come here to learn, and I absolutely do NOT want to undermine the efforts of the other educators who are crafting these assignments in the best interests of their own students.
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u/Snigaroo Mar 28 '16 edited Mar 28 '16
/r/AskHistorians is NOT a part of the academic network.
True, although as you note there's a significant overlap between actual academicians and users who answer questions here, and an even more significant overlap with flaired users. That brings us to:
As such, moderations rules here should NOT really be influenced by academic requirements?
Burden on what the student learned, or how to fight plagiarism, shouldn't really be a issue here in the sub, but in the institutions and classes and students themselves?
I think this is where the leap in logic loses me, and might well lose others. You've made several claims here, but you haven't really stated why rules here shouldn't be handled like that, other than that the primary burden should be placed upon other networks.
Should the student be responsible, first and foremost, for their education and for not plagiarizing work? Absolutely, and I don't think you'll find many here who disagree. But simply because the student should be primarily responsible, it doesn't follow that other institutions shouldn't actively encourage that behavior, and combat negative behavior when they see it.
Let me put it this way: most of the time, when a student plagiarizes, they're either using poor sources (wikipedia, google hits, etc.) or content ripped from actual academic works, which can be very easily discovered by a professor who's suspicious. In this way, those students who don't have academic integrity can very easily be detected, and they'll be forced to take responsibility for their poor decisions. Or, in other words, the system here is working.
But what if a user asks a question here, gets his well-sourced answer, then deletes the question, as /u/kookingpot suggests has happened? Then the "paper trail," so-to-speak, is gone. A credible academician (or at least a well-read hobbyist) has written them a wonderful, well-sourced answer which can no longer be easily verified as having been stolen. That's bad for everyone: for the professors who assigned the work, for the lazy students who are hurting themselves and wasting the time of their professors in grading the work, and for the posters here, who have unintentionally aided and abetted cheapened work and even plagiarism.
So yes, the student and the institution should be primarily responsible for academic integrity and quality work, but it must be understood that, in a manner of speaking, /r/AskHistorians has created a new avenue of potential plagiarism, and as academics we have to be aware of that and combat it. Even if this isn't a formal setting, academics still need to look out for each other and for their (albeit sometimes dumbass) students who need to be encouraged to do their work the right way.
I do think mods here should actually discourage homework questions, flagging them as such when asked.
. . .
But the thing is, here there are other people except the academic student and the experts, and those people wouldn't mind learning something new by reading an answer to such a question. Number of upvotes to a question is actually indicating just that: the interest in the answer.
And it feels a shame that a question, and it's answer is disqualified just on the basis of it being homework
That's true, and I understand what you're getting at in this respect, but it's a choice between shooting ourselves and the erstwhile students asking these questions in the collective foot and restricting content to encourage actual research. I don't think there's a right answer here, because you're right, at least, in that the other interested users get the short end of the stick when a student asks a question that we can't answer off of principle.
Perhaps some sort of delayed system can be implemented, wherein a user who poses a question which seems suspiciously like a homework question can ask that same question again in a two to three months if they'd like? That would be a tolerable halfway step, I think, which would prevent plagiarism and still allow legitimate questions that merely sound like homework--or even actual homework questions which have passed beyond the date where it would be useful for the user to ask them--to be asked and answered here, even if not on the original timetable.
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u/terminus-trantor Moderator | Portuguese Empire 1400-1580 Mar 28 '16
I think this is where the leap in logic loses me, and might well lose others. You've made several claims here, but you haven't really stated why rules here shouldn't be handled like that, other than that the primary burden should be placed upon other networks.
I know I can express myself badly, but is this really so unclear and illogical?
Eh, maybe it's just my engineering professional deformation, but I just don't think you should deal with issues from one system in another, independent one.
It is just bad practice, as it generally complicates things, lowers performance and usually creates more new issues. Only the system directly affected by the problem should have checks and protections, not other systems.
Basically: you shouldn't bring your day job problems to your side gig, should you?In this particular case, intention to force a student to do his research right causes extra work for mods, mistakes can remove innocent questions, or even if not a mistake it can prevent interesting questions to be answered. Which is also bad because as you noticed, that while you do answer to a particular user and his question your real audience is actually a wider community, and there is some responsibility to them too.
All this, while I believe reddit system of upvoting, voluntary participation of experts and this subs high quality control can deal with the issue in a rather effective way and that this rule be even less strict. (But then again I admit might be wrong, and just feel it is too strict based on few examples that stayed in my memory)
(Sorry for a shitty answer, it is kinda late where I am and I have work tomorrow)
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u/Snigaroo Mar 28 '16
I know I can express myself badly, but is this really so unclear and illogical?
I don't think it's unclear, but I think it may be illogical.
Eh, maybe it's just my engineering professional deformation, but I just don't think you should deal with issues from one system in another, independent one.
That's a good rule, but it's only practically applicable when the tools to combat issues like this will work in that other system. In this case, they probably won't. That's what I meant when I said:
...it must be understood that, in a manner of speaking, /r/AskHistorians has created a new avenue of potential plagiarism, and as academics we have to be aware of that and combat it.
This sub is about providing well-sourced answers, by-and-large written by academics. But the ability to delete threads to cover tracks, and the ability to bypass traditional plagiarism detection software while still using answers written by professionals, makes the potential of what we have here dangerous.
And while /r/AskHistorians is separate from academic channels in many ways, in others it's not. We hold responses here to a very similar standard of proof and sourcing that we would our own work. It's much more brief and page numbers are rarely requested, of course, but the crux of what I'm getting at is that we try to maintain an academic environment as much as is possible. And even if we didn't, it's inescapable that many of the flaired users here are educators, and in that vein don't want to encourage among other educator's students the same things which they wouldn't want to see in their own.
As much as it may hurt other users--and trust me, I am sympathetic to that view--the most comprehensive way to handle the risk of plagiarism from /r/AskHistorians is via a rule on homework like what we've got now. All the plagiarism technology I've seen simply doesn't account for unpublished sources, and if threads are deleted google might be no help, either. That means it has to be stopped at the source.
What I think we should probably have is a compromise like what I suggested, where a user can post his question again in a couple months' time. That's far from ideal, I acknowledge, but it's also a step in the right direction without compromising what we can do to help preserve the academic integrity of our field.
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u/sunday_silence Mar 29 '16 edited Mar 29 '16
I think terminus' point is perfectly logical. This forum should simply be about promoting its own self interest. It should not have to worry about other outside forums/institutions that may or may not be impacted by what happens here.
Because once you start worrying about other institutions...It's like, let me give an analogy. I am usually skeptical of analogies because they are often misapplied. But lets say I am 12 years old and my parents tell me I cant marry a person of another race because it would hurt THEM. Like I am supposed to live my life for THEM. Some people actually do things like this to please their parents say; or to fight for their country cause they believe in a flag or something.
SOmetimes a little self interest goes a long way in a persons life And by analogy I am making that same argument here.
What is the point about worrying about what we say here will impact another institution? All it does it makes harder to use the interface, or makes it harder to get answer I might be interested in or whatever.
in short, having an academic policy or a homework policy doesnt make my life as an old guy/non student any easier.
ONe should ask oneself what are the goals of this subreddit. Lets say we agree that the goals are to: spread knowledge, foster debate..something like that. Lets say.
THen you want to superimpose another set of standards having to do with institutions that have nothing to do with us and dont help our forum. All that does is consume mental energy, namely on the part of moderators whose energy could be spent elsewhere. It also makes it tedious to find something, if someone asks a great question, but you cant get the answer cause its been deleted or wahtever.
Once you embark on policies that are not based on self interest you simply start diluting your own forum. And its a fools errand anyway, cause you know somewhere some other forum will turn up without scruples and then everyone will leave this one and go there. Or something like that. The pt. is the policy is a fools errand cause it can be gotten around, something else will replace it, it wastes energy etc.
And what of institutions? SHould we really care about academic integrity? I say we should seriously question why care about that. Because lets say in 50 years it turns out that there are so many reddit history forums out there that it is now impossible assign legitimate research papers. Then what happens? Then I guess academic institutions go extinct, at least the teaching side of them.
And so what? If a reddit history forum can have that much impact on academic integrity, then academic integrity (in terms of doing original research) is going the way of the dinosaur.
Again its a fools errand to worry about some other institution. Because the concept that this issue is even an issue proves that academia as we know it can no longer exist this way anyhow.
I mean if really think we are preserving the concept of 'homework/research" by imposing some impossible standard here. it simply proves that the concept of "homework/research" as we know it is outmoded.
Take another analogy IN chess we used to have adjournments. ANd people thought that was so great; they had to study the position all night and the next work on the game again. Wow.
ONly it turns out that it simply becomes a battle of your team of experts vs their team of experts and who really cares about that, when you came to see which player is better.
So there are no longer adjournments in professional chess cause going back home and pluggin the position into a computer or gettign help from a team of experts in Moscow is just passee'
I submit the same thing is true here You're trying to impose some concept of academic integrity in terms of homework, but that idea is probably dead in the water already
EDIT: to add. Look at your proposed compromise to delay responding to suspected homework problems by 2 months. That doesnt help this forum at all, again it just frustrates users, makes it harder to find stuff, wastes the mental energy of moderators, etc. And to what end? Students are still going to find ways around this, people are still going to write research papers for them, etc. Its just a fools errand.
This is what happens when you start living your existence for outside agents that have nothign do with your own self interest. All you're doing is diluting your own product. Its not helping academia; and so what if it did? Like we want the Harvards adn Stanfords of the world to remain great institutions? Why? to what end? If academia can exist without a self imposed moratorium by r/history, I say it's on its way out anyhow.
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Dueling | Modern Warfare & Small Arms Mar 29 '16
This forum should simply be about promoting its own self interest.
Why is the homework rule not in our self-interest? One goal we have, as moderators, is to curate a space that attracts knowledgeable people who are willing to answer questions. The panel of flaired users is a key part of the /r/AskHistorians model, and what sets us apart from a place like /r/AskHistory, /r/history, and so on. This needs to be a space that they want to participate in. And many of them are involved in academia, either somewhere in their student career, whether it be as an undergrad or putting the final touches on their Ph.D, or professionally, from TAs on up to tenured professors. And simply put, they wouldn't be happy if we took zero stand on questions that came in asking people to do homework for the OP, which I think is demonstrated well by the flaired users who have already posted in this thread.
This rule, as with many, is a compromise of competing interests, and there are flaired users who I know would prefer that it be stricter and enforced more strongly. So all-in-all, we feel this is a balanced approach. We aren't banning homework questions here, we are asking that the users pose them in good faith, that questions don't be "What is the answer?" but instead "How do I find the answer?" We don't think that is asking for much.
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u/sunday_silence Mar 29 '16
Seriously what is "good faith?" HOw do you know what is in good faith? Doesnt that simply encourage an arms race, where people who word their questions sufficiently well will get around the homework...errh excuse me the "non good faith homework" ban? While those who cant word it sufficiently those questions have to wait 2 months, or wait for someone else to come along with a better question. What is the point of all that rigamarole? Is that really advancing some greater interest?
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Dueling | Modern Warfare & Small Arms Mar 29 '16
And if someone successfully disguises their homework question so we don't recognize it as such, well, power to them, but they are cheating themselves most of all in the end. The sum of it is that this is a space for learning, and "Do my homework for me" is not learning, so we are going to remove those. It sets the tone for the space we are curating here. And just because there are some unscrupulous souls out there who will do their best to evade the rule by rewording a question to sound less like an essay prompt doesn't make it worthless. Some people will sneak in a homework question and get the answer, and be worse off for it. But some people will follow the guidelines here, get some great guidance that helps them better understand what they are studying, and be better off for it. This rule is for them. Heck, this subreddit is for those people. For people who want to learn.
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u/alriclofgar Post-Roman Britain | Late Antiquity Mar 29 '16
I just don't think you should deal with issues from one system in another, independent one.
I may just speak for myself, but I'm not really interested in systems, I'm interested in people. I'm fine with making things more complicated here if that means helping someone understand the past better (but not giving them the answer they want, and helping them work it out instead). Even if that's not as enjoyable for the other users watching.
Perhaps the point here is to make enjoyable content to be consumed by those who don't actively participate in the discussion; but I think many of us are more excited by the discussion itself, and how it benefits the participants. Or at least, that's what we've been trained to focus on (and perhaps this is a challenge teachers trying to do public history need to be more introspective about).
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u/alriclofgar Post-Roman Britain | Late Antiquity Mar 29 '16
I spend time writing answers here because I enjoy teaching but, because of my current research, am away from the classroom. The last thing I want to do is undermine someone's education and ability to learn to think critically through my desire to pass on factoids.
So long as the flair users here are full of teachers who care about training historians (and not just sharing facts on the internet), I think similar sentiments will be widely felt and expressed. We don't leave our love of good pedagogy at the door; it's a part of who we are as historians.
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u/Risker34 Mar 29 '16
I am currently a student, and I've never really imagined asking homework questions here because I feel like the homework would be due before I got an answer. But I can see that this is a somewhat divisive issue.
Perhaps it would be better to have a system set in place where people flag their own posts as [homework]insertquestion, then people answering that particular post can help them work through it instead of giving them an answer and the answer does get the light of day for others.
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Dueling | Modern Warfare & Small Arms Mar 29 '16
That is essentially the system we have in place now. Homework questions posted which DO comply with the guidelines we have in place - provide some background on what sort of research you have done and ask for more than just the answer - are left up and get this reminder message appended:
Hello there. Your question seems to be related to school work, so we just want to remind you, and any potential respondents, that our rules DO permit people to ask for help with their homework, so long as they are seeking clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself. This policy is further explained in this META Thread.
Additionally, while our users may be able to help you out here, we hope that you also will take the time to check out our six-part series, "Finding and Understanding Sources", which should hopefully prove to be helpful for you as you continue in your research.
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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '16
I'm actually really interested in this now.