> Homework questions must seek to understand the concepts being taught, not just demand a solution. For help writing a good homework question, see: How to ask a homework question?

Yes this is likely a better place to discuss it.

I am not sure what are the limits on the number of close reasons, but it seems that some sites has more than MSE: Can we have more than 3 custom close reasons, pretty please? (Which I found from here: The number of custom close reasons.)

OTOH if a close voter is not satisfied with any of the predefined choices, they can always choose "other" and type (or copy-paste) their preferred wording.

One of the reasons I feel like PSQ or Homework would be a better closure reason is that in some cases (like the one mentioned in CRUDE here ) the posters add work and even what you could call context but the question still isn't really all that great.

This might be due to the OP being non-native (IMO that can be quite a big issue) or because the question is quite basic and it's hard to make it "good quality".

I've been pondering asking a question for a few days now which I know I won't show work for (I don't have the energy to try really) but which I'm confident will be fine because it's a decently interesting question with what can be an interesting answer. But this is much easier to do with a question about voting/runoff systems than with a basic question about geometry.

I understand though that MathSE is for people interested in Math at all levels. And seeing the mathematical literacy in the society as a whole I think the lower levels are much more crucial than the higher ones.

The fact that the question is basic does not mean that it cannot be useful.

@MartinSleziak No it doesn't. But a person who asks a question that is basic is much less likely to be able to make it useful than a person with a higher mathematical background. I'm fairly sure I can come up with a useful question about solving a quadratic and add enough context for it to pass.

Well, this is exactly why I feel that effort shown is quite acceptable way of including context. Simply because it is easier to add, even for somebody who is not already familiar with the area.

Of course, if somebody posts a question simply because they think it might be useful and want the Q&A pair to be available on the site, that's perfectly fine. And in such cases it is more likely that context will be tilted more towards motivation, explanation where problems of that type appears or why knowing the answer (or a general technique) is useful, etc.

But the reason I can do that is that I used to teach Calc1-3 and know what people struggle with, how to phrase it in a way that makes it useful for them and what to include. A person who can't fathom how to factor -3x^2+9x+12 because there's a minus up front and they never saw one like it is unlikely to be able to phrase a

Anyway I'm veering away from the original point I think. I was just trying to come up with a way to prepare people for the fact that they won't know how to ask a reasonable question and should either search elsewhere or be ready for a number of back and forth comments, as they add more and more context. In the end though this might just be my misunderstanding of the actual goals of MathSE.

It is true that many users view the goals of the site very differently: What is the purpose of this site?

But probably several of the viewpoints expressed in the linked discussion can coexist quite peacefully.

@MartinSleziak I think the peaceful coexistence is a bit tricky. Mainly because really the format "Q&A" lends itself to only a very limited notion of teaching and the competition bit flies right in the face of the high-quality content. Even the Q&A bit is complex because if I look at crude or the close vote queues we're really saying "Only answer good questions"

Whatever good actually means.

The reason I say Q&A is bad for teaching is that (at least in my experience) for teaching you need many Q&A iterations. This again is particularly true for basic math but doesn't really go away even for high level math. You need to give hints and listen to responses so you can adapt and have the person learn.

I agree. Chat is probably ideal for something like that. (I.e., if the main intention is to help the specific user who asks the question. On the main site, even if we are trying to help the OP, it is good to keep in mind that ideally the post should be useful to others, too.)

@MartinSleziak Very much agreed. I have managed to get a couple users into chats after prolonged comments threads and that just worked so much better.

Chat can take quite a lot of time, though.

It does. On the other hand so does writing an actual good answer. It's just that many answers to PSQ's are pretty much just PSS's and don't teach anything.

Maybe we should vote to close PSS's.:)

PSS? I'm going to learn a new TLA today.

Problem Statement Solutions.

In other words the answer doesn't do anything other then produce a solution without adding any insight.

I made that one up to, it's not particularly good but it seemed to stand nicely in contrast to PSQ.

And PSA was already taken.

I'll have to go. It seems that other users discussing previously in CRUDE haven't moved here (or at least stayed silent). But in any case, thanks for mentioning your views on this stuff.