Sorry for the cheesy-sounding alliterative title - I didn't write it that way one purpose.
Today, in my math class I heard one of my (rather apathetic) classmates say something like this:
"I found this website where you can post problems, and math people will solve them for you. So if you post problems from our assignment on there every once in a while, we can have the whole thing done by the end of the week."
I don't know for sure whether this person was talking about MSE - but I would say it's safe to assume so, since MSE is probably the most prominent math Q&A website out there. This made me pretty angry, and I found myself faced with a dilemma... how could I stop this blatant cheating from occurring? In all likelihood, the community would recognize these questions as homework questions, but one can never be sure of the extent to which a slothful student is willing to disguise his or her homework problem.
This gave me an idea - what if, on MSE, we had a database of problems from ongoing contests, nearby tests, and current assignments, to which trusted members of the community can add problems? If this feature was implemented, perhaps MSE could systematically scan questions before they are posted for similarity to questions in this database to prevent cheating. This would certainly save a lot of work for mods, and create a lot of work for people who feel entitled to having their homework done for them.
Anyways, this is just an idea, and I thought I would propose it to the community to see how everybody feels about it. Let me know what you think!