As the homework tag is officially deprecated on SO, the question arises whether we should follow suit here, on DBA.SE. So, should we?
3 Answers
For one, I think yes. The tag itself doesn't add too much value to a question: if it is a good question, then we are happy, if it is not, then appropriate measures should be taken, no matter it's a homework or not.
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7I agree and think in general that meta-tags should not be used on questions. Tagging's primary use is to allow people to find questions easily, and I would be surprised if anyone ever wants to see all the
homework
questions.– JNK ModCommented Nov 12, 2012 at 13:29
I think tags are just to sort the questions , if what ever tag is there whether homework or anything ,if the question is not constructive we can flag it ,so in my viewpoint deprecating the homework tag alone will not decrease questions which are less constructive. We should have one thing in major good questions ..
The point of the homework
tag was supposed to be, as I understand it, that answers should be leading rather than direct. If, as a community, we don't want leading answers, then the homework
tag should be deprecated.
I think there is a tension all across the StackExchange network between wanting to be a helpful place to get questions answered and wanting to be the wiki where all of the best technical answers are found. On the one hand we want to avoid it becoming a sea of meaningless drivel and on the other hand we want to build up the size of the community.
To me, the question of whether or not to deprecate homework
comes down to whether or not we want to chase off questions from students because they aren't "real world problems" (or alternatively, whether we want to agree to do their homework for them).
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1I agree, the real dynamic is between helping students do their homework or not. As well part of the tension arises because it's not unheard of for a student to ask a question, get an answer and then never accept or even up vote. Commented Nov 19, 2012 at 14:28