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As far as I know, homework like questions are not completely banned but they are effectively banned because anything that looks remotely like a homework question is closed pretty quick. I would like to argue that this policy is elitist and biased against disadvantaged students. AI is rapidly developing, but the most advanced cutting edge AI usually requires a monthly payment. There are also web sites that provide homework help by certified tutors also for a monthly payment. If one or both of the parents happen to be university lecturers they can help their child with their homework. Sites like Wolfram Alpha offer help with mathematical questions which show all the steps to obtain the answer, again for a monthly fee. All this means that students with rich parents or well educated parents have better access to homework help that poor kids do not. If schools have a policy of awarding a pass in a subject based on homework scores they are awarding a pass based on work that is done outside the supervision of the school and they have no idea of how much external help has been provided to the student and they should perhaps review their policy.

Homework should be there to allow the student to check they have correctly absorbed what they have been been taught and to check what principles might need some more tutoring on to clear up any misconceptions. Homework should not be used to check the performance of a student and judge their ability relative to other students especially when so much outside help is available to (rich) students when out of sight. AI is rapidly improving and in a few years might be available to everyone instantly on demand and passing or failing students based on their homework will be futile and refusing to help students in Physics SE, will not hold back the tide. Homework is there to benefit the student and make them think through the topic and if they present work done by others as their own work without giving the topic any thought they are only cheating themselves in the end and this will be become clear when they do a supervised exam without anyone helping them. Homework should only be there to help the student with their understanding of the topic and if the answers to 'homework' question are presented in such a way as to clarify the concepts involved, then that is helpful to everyone.

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    $\begingroup$ " It almost seems as if the Physics SE anti homework policy is there to protect the homework help industry that is out there" - No, it is there because it is not physics.SE's purpose to provide homework help. I resent the implication that the only reason anyone could be against having homework questions on this site could be because they want to disadvantage the people asking those questions. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 15:06
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    $\begingroup$ We've discussed the reason for the policy many times before (e.g. physics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/10079/50583, physics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5229/50583) and this meta question lacks any awareness of this. I would prefer if we tried to understand the arguments of the other side before ascribing nefarious intent to them. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 15:06
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    $\begingroup$ I didn't read deeply into this wall of text, but if HW is there to "check they have correctly absorbed what has been taught" then giving away the answers (for free or for pay) would not provide this check in any way, shape or form. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 15:44
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    $\begingroup$ I mean, basically what you're saying is, "Students are going to cheat, let's help them cheat" which is the opposite of helping students learn physics (or any subject for that matter). $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 15:45
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    $\begingroup$ @KyleKanos I am saying "the elite" have access to resources that allow then to outperform students that do have those resources and so homework should not count towards a pass or fail in a topic. Cheating is not cheating if there is no reward for producing good homework. Why would any student bother producing good homework then? It is for their own benefit to get practice for exam condition and to self check their own understanding. If they cheat,, they only cheat themselves. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 15:52
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    $\begingroup$ A rich student can ask their private home tutor to explain some concept in their homework that is baffling them and come to a better understanding that will help them in the future. Why should rich students be the only ones to benefit from that sort of help? $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 15:58
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    $\begingroup$ There are already a lot of free ways to cheat on homework. And it seems silly to make our site’s role just a cheaper version of GPT, which is already very cheap. We should focus on answering deeper questions that others can’t, not endlessly retype the same solutions to the same 5 questions about uniformly accelerated motion. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 16:49
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    $\begingroup$ Globally, the tutoring industry employs probably over a million people. This site has most of its good answers written by a few dozen volunteers. We can’t replace a whole sector of the economy, and if we tried, the site would get flooded with millions of identical questions, and most of those qualified people would leave. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 16:53
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    $\begingroup$ I don't understand why users like you are so insistent in giving homework help on this site. Nobody is saying you cannot help people with homework; just don't do it on this site. Even I myself sometimes give homework help in other places. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 17:01
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    $\begingroup$ Extending @VincentThacker's comment, we even keep an active list of free HW help sites: physics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/391/25301 $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 17:45
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    $\begingroup$ @kdp I am saying "the elite" have access to resources that allow then to outperform students that do have those resources... Define "elite" because by several of those metrics, I qualify as "elite" and do not have any of the resources you seem to think I do. ...and so homework should not count towards a pass or fail in a topic... that's not an argument for us, that's something you need to get all schools on board with & have fun with that (it's also irrelevant to this site). $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 17:47
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    $\begingroup$ Perhaps one thing that we could do is include the link to free HW help sites in the canned text for closing a HW thread. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 12, 2024 at 19:51

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Please do not confuse good will with obligation. While it is certainly admirable to render free homework assistance to disadvantaged students, there is neither legal nor moral obligation to do so. When these two are confused, reaching an objective conclusion becomes extremely difficult. We as an online community should have the freedom to collectively make decisions without being bound by the feeling that we are obligated to help everyone. As such, your argument seems like a guilt-tripping attempt to me.

In addition, the homework policy is not a personal attack against anyone. It is not a judgement of the asker's character or ability. There is nothing against giving homework help elsewhere, either. It's just that this site is not the place to do it. There is no deeper hidden motive or conspiracy behind the homework policy. As already mentioned, we even maintain a list of other sites that do offer physics homework help.

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    $\begingroup$ I actually think that the HW policy of this site does more to guarantee students are actually helped, i.e. really learn something rather than being spoon-fed complete solutions. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 13, 2024 at 14:26
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    $\begingroup$ @Amit That would be something I agree with. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 15, 2024 at 21:12
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This is just a rant about your education system, not about PSE. It is NOT the purpose of this site to help with homework. This has nothing to do with the financial situation of students or the choice of academic assessment where you study.

If you have academic issues with assignments, you already have access to a free help service: your instructor. They know the context of the material and the expectations better than any contributor on this site, and they answer questions for free as part of their job.

The choice of this community is to make this site useful to practitioners or future practitioners who are interested in something deeper and more conceptual than homework questions. Given you yourself are a user of the site, you know about the homework policy and keep using the site. Thus you must find the current format sufficiently useful for you to be a return user.

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  • $\begingroup$ "you already have access to a free help service: your instructor. " Right there is an elitist 1st world assumption. In the news yesterday was an article about two girls in Gaza. Their school had been destroyed by a bomb and their instructor is dead. They said they were having to resort to self teaching. Telling them to consult their instructor is very presumptuous and it probably never occurred to you that not everyone in the world has easy access to the resources you do. It's like telling an African who is complaining about the cost of cost of bottled water to just drink water from a tap. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 13, 2024 at 15:28
  • $\begingroup$ P.S. I am not looking for free help with homework. I am just saying I am willing to help anyone who has a genuine interest in learning about physics and is seeking guidance, but I am prevented from doing so. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 13, 2024 at 15:30
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    $\begingroup$ with due respect: your example is extreme to the point of being self-defeating. I don't think people in Gaza should rely on PSE to be a resource for their physics assignments. In fact, the best thing we can do is clean up this site from assignments so when they have conceptual issues they can come to this site and find a good answer without having to scroll through 100s if not 1000s of answers to questions that aren't related to their specific assignments but instead focus on explaining the central concept. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 13, 2024 at 15:48
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    $\begingroup$ It is good that you are willing to help people, and I salute you for this. The point is that PSE is not the right place to do this. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 13, 2024 at 15:49
  • $\begingroup$ Your basic point is: "This site is great but it doesn't do everything I want it to". You're right, it doesn't. If you don't like it don't use it. This is like saying "this train is fantastic but the conductor is elitist because he doesn't stop in my town". Not every train has to stop in every town, and there's nothing elitist about not stopping everywhere. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 13, 2024 at 15:52
  • $\begingroup$ People keep telling me PSE is this and the rules are that as if these facts are not up for discussion. Basically, suck it up. I thought the point of meta was discuss what sort of site and rules we want. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 13, 2024 at 16:13
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    $\begingroup$ … and, again with all due respect, maybe you should read the multiple meta threads on the topic on homework, written over multiple years, most of them before you became a valued member of this community. Everyone is open to constructive suggestions but they must be made with context, and it is unfortunately not clear what you bring to the debate that has not been debated before. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 13, 2024 at 16:35
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I think it is not, since the guiding principle behind this rule is not an elitist principle, but to preserve the purpose of the forum as a place to perceive knowledge. There are ways to get help with your homework without just putting the full question here and asking someone to solve it. Ex: if your homework asks you to solve the equation of motion of a harmonic oscillator and you don't know how, you can ask about good sources to learn it, or what's exactly the point you are missing like what is a second order differential equation, etc. You can try to solve it alone and ask if an answer like you got makes sense physically, or how to do sanity checking in the problem that you are solving. I don't see any of these examples as a "do my homework" question.

It is true that sources of easy answers are growing fast with recent developments. But we don't need to follow the stream and turn to be another one.

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