I was reading Proposal: ban verbatim homework questions which have no accompanying text and I came upon some startling old statistics.
Since 2013, the number of questions on this site has multiplied by more than 6 times.
Likewise, the number of answers has multiplied by more than 5 times.
We are clearly the second largest site on the network, with almost triple the number of new questions per day than the third leading site in Q's/day.
Reading over A Consolidated Homework Policy, it appears that there is no clear consensus on how the community wishes to handle homework-like questions. One of the main problems is we aren't very clear on what we mean by "homework-like", as shown in What is our policy on questions that are quite clearly homework?.
Going back to the first link, however, we may look upon some interesting examples of homework policies from other sites. Taken from physics:
They have a closing option for homework:
And the following policy is found from the help center:
"Do my homework"-type physics questions
"A 4kg ball is traveling at 8m/s in the x direction, how do I find..." Physics - Stack Exchange is not a homework help site. If you have a question about a homework problem, or any problem of an educational nature, narrow it down to the specific concept that is giving you trouble and ask about that. You can find more information about acceptable homework questions on our meta site.
Why don't we have a similar policy? Something along the lines of a copy/paste, changing the first line.
Likely, the first question that will be posed against this policy might be...
How do I know its a homework problem? (or any problem of an educational nature) - paraphrased from zyx
(I presume 'educational nature' may refer to questions involving self-taught topics)
We may take, once again, from Physics.SE:
A "homework question" is any question whose value lies in helping you understand the method by which the question can be solved, rather than getting the answer itself. This includes not just questions from actual homework assignments, but also self-study problems, puzzles, etc.
On the other hand, questions that come up in the course of doing a homework problem, but are separate from the main point of the problem, might not be considered homework questions. There's a bit of a judgment call to be made, depending on the context of the problem. If you're not sure, it's probably safer to treat your question as a homework question and later find out that it isn't, than the other way around.
I think that the first paragraph would not apply well here, but that the second paragraph would. I'd rather change it to:
A "homework question" is any question whose value lies in obtaining an answer to an isolated question and provides no significant value to other significantly substantial problems. For example, asking "An equilateral triangle has sides of length 8m, how do I find its area?" is considered a homework question because its only goal is to find an answer to a specific question that cannot be used to help solve other significantly substantial problems. On the other hand, asking "A triangle has some given side lengths a, b, c. How can I find its area in general in terms of a, b, and c?" is less likely to be a homework question since it asks a more general question which may be used to solve other related problems.
On the other hand, questions that come up in the course of doing a homework problem, but are separate from the main point of the problem, might not be considered homework questions. There's a bit of a judgment call to be made, depending on the context of the problem. If you're not sure, it's probably safer to treat your question as a homework question and later find out that it isn't, than the other way around.
Note that this policy also allows some leeway. There is no black and white, as the second paragraph points out, and certainly the first paragraph can't encompass every case. However, providing a clear and precise enough policy on what homework questions are and how we should deal with them is, in my opinion, a good first step.
Other such questions may be asked, but I certainly can't cover all of them.
Here's a lollipop for reading all of this, so please provide some constructive feedback on my thoughts.