Chat session on renaming homework tag

David Z

Sep 23, 2014 16:16

Not to displace any of the 3+ conversations simultaneously happening now, but we may also want to discuss this:

28

Q: Should we rename the homework tag as "problem-solving", or such?

It seems that many users find the homework tag "demeaning", e.g. here. There have been many other instances of this, which has also lead to various posts being locked. The users refute that "This is not homework!!!", often, too. I suggest that we rename it (for example, as proble...

Danu

The relevant quote from Lubos' blog: An otherwise cautious Italian physicist promised his student to cut his right ball if SUSY isn't discovered at LEP I. ;-)

@DavidZ it's a clear yes from the community (me included)

John Rennie

@DavidZ I didn't comment because I'm clearly in the minority, but I hate the proposal.

David Z

@JohnRennie oh, I would think being in the minority is more reason to comment

John Rennie

The point of blocking homework is because it's too localised (remember when we had a too localised close region?)

David Z

(it could even be that the minority is actually the silent majority)

John Rennie

Sep 23, 2014 16:18

Homework is blocked because it's of interest to only one person

Calling it problem solving doesn't make it any more interesting, it just makes it sound superficially more reasonable.

zounds

@JohnRennie my question is that even if measuring position completely destroyed the previous momentum, after running the experiment, don't we have both the position and the momentum at time t when the electron passes the first gate?

Kyle Kanos

I do kinda like the idea of swapping it to problem-solving because it would stop people from complaining "I've not been in school for X years, this isn't homework"

But, in the end, it doesn't really change anything

It's still likely off-topic

Danu

@JohnRennie I think the change is just to prevent people from complaining about their questions being close (what Kyle is saying)

John Rennie

I'm not against changing the homework tag to something else, but problem-solving sounds too reasonable. How can you justify closing something on the grounds it's about solving a problem?

2

We could change it to, erm, how about too-localised ?

soumyadeep

@KyleKanos Right.You answered the question once and for all.Now forget inductors.What i ask now is -does KVL requires conservative field?

David Z

Sep 23, 2014 16:20

@JohnRennie I agree with that... which is why I brought it up, I'm hoping we can come up with a better option for the tag name

I've been thinking recently that the class of questions which should receive the homework tag (or whatever we rename it to) and the class of questions we close using the homework-like close reason are not the same.

Basically, the reason we have the tag in the first place is so that people who don't want to see pedagogical questions can filter them out

Kyle Kanos

@soumyadeep No, I do not believe it does.

John Rennie

I agree that a homework question can be interesting and useful to lots of people. After all that's why physics books include exercises.

Kyle Kanos

I like homework-like because it is more closely aligned with the Physics.SE definition of homework

Danu

I think David is making an excellent point

I hadn't thought about it like that before

David Z

@JohnRennie well, I don't think I'd quite agree that that's why physics books include exercises, but that is a reasonable point: questions relating to homework can be interesting to more than just someone working on the exact problem

but they have to be asked in a certain way

John Rennie

Sep 23, 2014 16:23

In a way that's not too localised you mean :-)

David Z

Yeah, pretty much

Basically our hw-like close reason tries to encapsulate that way

I think this comment of mine is something to think about:

I'm not opposed to this (considering it was kind of my idea!) but I would like to think really hard about whether there isn't some better name to use. Recently I've been thinking that we call the HW policy a homework policy because the original motivation behind it was to exclude homework questions - but what we're really trying to do is exclude a broader class of low-/no-effort, non-conceptual questions which are not in line with the goals we have for the site. So I think a name that doesn't make any reference to "homework" would be a big plus. — David Z ♦ Sep 18 at 18:41

2

although since then I've come around more to the view that the close reason perhaps should be separated from the tag

Danu

I agree

(including the modification)

John Rennie

Me too

David Z

So, thinking out loud...

for the close reason, I think we should think about what makes a question inappropriate for the site. Not its being homework specifically, but its being low- or no-effort, because we don't want to be known as a place that facilitates cheating, and also because we want questions that are interesting to a broader user base.

and for the tag, we should think about what sorts of questions should not be closed but which high-level users would want to filter out

and choose a tag name based on that

John Rennie

worked-examples ?

For the tag I mean

David Z

Sep 23, 2014 16:28

Not a bad suggestion, but I think it might be broader than that

Danu

@JohnRennie I don't like it

David Z

I guess, I don't exactly know what kinds of questions people want to filter out, because I'm not one of the people who does it. It would be good to get input from those who do. Maybe I'll make a meta post about it

soumyadeep

@DavidZ Well not everyone does cheating.This site is also for physics enthusiasts and unfortunately for users (like me) there are not many people around, whom i may trust.

John Rennie

The thing is that homework is pretty much ideal for use as a filter

Anything as effective is going to be a synonym for homework

Danu

@soumyadeep Right, but the kind of questions that often come up in that context are simply not the ones we aim to answer on this site

Not saying there are no exceptions, but one has to keep in mind we are not a replacement for a university or similar institution

David Z

Sep 23, 2014 16:32

@JohnRennie yeah, I do think the main motivation for switching from homework is to keep people from complaining that their non-homework questions were marked with the tag

Danu

OK, I think we can agree that the tag name should be a synonym.

But I think the really important question is the one David raised

what is it exactly that we don't like about many of these HW-type questions

Kyle Kanos

@Danu That they're "Do my homework for me" questions

And whether it's from Wald or Holliday & Resnick, I don't really want to do their work for them

Danu

RIght

But some of my questions arose as actual homework, yet I think they were good questions

David Z

@KyleKanos well, but questions which are really asking us to just do a homework problem should get closed

John Rennie

@Danu Remember the distinction between the tag and the close reason. The tag is use to specify what we don't want to see, while the close reason is what we don't think should be on the site.

Danu

Sep 23, 2014 16:35

@JohnRennie I know, I'm trying to explain that to Kyle

rmhleo

Maybe Conceptual-Problem? I have seen that many of them are meant to test knowledge or to challenge the knowledge of the concepts in physics....

Kyle Kanos

@DavidZ I vote to close those types of questions.

David Z

@KyleKanos yeah, which is why I don't think it's important to choose a tag that applies to them. The name of the tag should IMO reflect the kinds of questions which we don't want to close, but which certain people don't want to see.

Kyle Kanos

@JohnRennie I'm not convinced they're different

John Rennie

@KyleKanos there have been homework questions that I've found interesting, and that I've learned from.

Danu

Sep 23, 2014 16:36

@KyleKanos did you follow the discussion we just had?

Where did we lose you?

i.e. where did you start disagreeing

David Z

@KyleKanos to be clear, they're not really different now, but we're thinking they should be (not sure if that was clear)

Kyle Kanos

@JohnRennie I don't doubt they exist, but from what I see, they are few and far between

Danu

@KyleKanos but that indicates the HW tag and VTC reason are not referring to the same set of questions

John Rennie

@KyleKanos Hmm, I've just searched for [homework] in the hope of finding an interesting question and found nothing in the first few pages.

However in the past there have been QM and GR related homework questions that I did find interesting. But I concede your point that these are a (small?) minority.

David Z

@JohnRennie they are rare, though also we're not as consistent about applying the tag as we used to be, I think

Kyle Kanos

Sep 23, 2014 16:42

@Danu Perhaps, but it applies to a large percentage

Danu

@KyleKanos sure, and it all works fine as of right now, but we're trying to improve regardless

@JohnRennie What do you think about this: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/89611/…

it wasn't tagged as HW for lack of space, but it should've been

John Rennie

1

A: Confusion about proper time

The proper time of an observer is the time shown on that observer's clock. This is because the observer's frame looks locally like flat space so: $$ d\tau^2 = dt^2 - dx^2 - dy^2 - dz^2 $$ and (obviously) in the observer's frame the observer is at rest, so $dx$, $dy$ and $dz$ are all zero and th...

That's the sort of question that has to be answered by discussing concepts.

That's not a great example - it's just the first I found

Danu

@JohnRennie Yeah... I would've VTC if I saw it pop up in the queue haha

John Rennie

3

A: Static geodesics in GR

I think Jerry's point is that if you have a metric that looks like: $$ ds^2 = a(dx^0)^2 + f(dx^1, dx^2, dx^3) $$ where $a$ is a constant and $f$ is any function, then an observer moving in the $x^0$ direction follows a geodesic of the type you describe. An obvious example is the FLRW metric whe...

Kyle Kanos

@JohnRennie I would not have voted to close it because it's asking about which frame to apply the proper time; it's a good question IMO.

John Rennie

Sep 23, 2014 16:45

I won't bother searching further as tis gives an idea of what I think is worth answering

@KyleKanos it's a good question IMO ah, but it's tagged as homework ...

And that's the point. People may not wish to see Q/As that are basically just me explaining concepts to a student.

Kyle Kanos

@JohnRennie To which I'd argue it probably doesn't need that particular tag. Alemi added that one in after it was asked

David Z

@Danu @KyleKanos I wouldn't VTC that one

soumyadeep

Sorry to bother you all-but now is your problem about HW is that they lack standards or they show lack of effort?

Danu

@soumyadeep A linear combination

David Z

@soumyadeep I think different groups of people have different problems with HW-like questions and we're trying to develop a solution that works for all of them

John Rennie

Sep 23, 2014 16:48

@KyleKanos But it's blatantly a homework question ...

Danu

Question: Is a superposition always linear? :)

John Rennie

@Danu Yes, superposition only works in linear systems

Kyle Kanos

@JohnRennie I disagree, it's asking why proper time is applied to one frame and not the other. Sure it arose because of OP's homework, but I don't think it's homework.

John Rennie

Well suppose the tag was educational. Would that be a better description?

soumyadeep

@JohnRennie +1

Danu

Sep 23, 2014 16:51

perhaps a variation of educational / pedagogical etc?

Kyle Kanos

In looking through the answers, Qmechanic's homework-and-exercises isn't too bad

John Rennie

I like pedagogical - it sounds posh :-)

David Z

That question may be an interesting case study for our current debate. There are two things to address: (1) should be be closed? (I think not) and (2) would people want to filter it out?

@KyleKanos ooh I kind of like that. I hadn't seen that one.

John Rennie

How do you get the text-in-a-box look?

Danu

I like that too

Kyle Kanos

Sep 23, 2014 16:52

2

A: Should we rename the homework tag as "problem-solving", or such?

How about homework-and-exercises? It is self-explanatory, and that way we still call a spade a spade while simultaneously leave open the possibility that it might not be actual homework.

@JohnRennie" [tag:homework-and-exercises]

John Rennie

cool

Danu

[tag:that's_kinda_fun?]

John Rennie

@Danu Obviously not!

Kyle Kanos

No, it needs hyphens or maybe underscores

Danu

damnit

David Z

Sep 23, 2014 16:54

It has to be something that could plausibly be a real tag: <=25 chars, no spaces, IIRC

Kyle Kanos

danu-questions

David Z

apparently no special characters either (except hyphens, maybe underscores?)

Danu

only_hyphens

ah

David Z

OK well before we get too carried away tinkering with the tag renderer, what shall we take away from today's discussion? (5 mins left in chat session)

I think a meta post seeking to clarify what sorts of questions people want to filter out is in order

John Rennie

homework-and-exercises works for me

4

Danu

Sep 23, 2014 16:56

You could lay out some alternatives in a meta post

pedagogical/hw&exer/???

I like hw&ex too

John Rennie

I think exercises covers educational/pedagogical by implication

David Z

@Danu I mean, technically we already have that meta post ;-) But maybe a runoff is in order. But I'd like to get a better sense of what we are using the tag to represent first. It may have changed since we first introduced the homework tag.

Danu

@DavidZ Make sure to link this discussion, and highlight the difference between the tag and VTC etc etc

David Z

@Danu good idea, in fact I'll bookmark the chat session so it's easily accessible

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