Do top contributors care about academic dishonesty?

This 'Top Contributor' certainly does.

My Y!A profiles states:-

If you expect me to do your homework for you then at the very least I will expect you to do your fair share of thinking- that's what homework is for. My children do their homework on their own- why should they be made to look less capable because others cheat and get help?

Favourite game: Encouraging answerers to give incorrect answers to homework questions so that lazy cheating students have to check which answers are correct i.e. do the work they're supposed to do.

I used to think that Google was a lazy way of finding out something - but now I realise that the *really* lazy people ask questions on Y!A so that others look up the answers on Google for them.

Cheating science students become cheating scientists.

Cheating scientists invent results.

Invented results cost lives

I encourage other answerers to also stop spoon-feeding lazy students with answers and make them use their own brains. Remember that in a few years time one of these cheats might be responsible for testing the safety of a drug you might be prescribed...

One more penny in the pile...

As another TC - here and in Mathematics, I see a lot of lazy cheating. Wholesale cut-and-pasted questions. Sometimes these appear to have been sent *during* a child's class - possibly even during a test!

In these cases, I encourage lazy answers. Deliberate wrong answers. Answers that send the child to a wikipedia article or a website where they can read it for themselves!!!

And sometimes it is blatent - where the child copies the whole @#$% question - including the teacher's admonition to ''show all work''. Errrmmm... no. Its not *my* homework.

However...

When its the rare, or occasional question, even obviously homework, it can be nearly irresistable to show how to work the problem, and it is usually easier to just give the answer at the end,, rather than remember to add some rejoinder as : ''And you can do the calculation now for yourself'' or some such.

And 1/100th of a sec after I submit my response, I realize that the child will very likely just take the final answer, copy that, and ignore the rest.

And sometimes, you see the same username post 4, 5 7, 10 questions in a row - and all basic, simple questions - - the science questions frequently of a nature that you recognize after 2 or 3 that these are going to be answered by just reading their textbook. It will probably be in the latest chapter - word-for-word.

I tell the child so - and encourage them to crack their book and read it.

And sometimes... its a plea for help - the child just seriously does not understand. While I am a huge advocate of public schools - I also am a realist - and I recognize that there are teachers that... do not inspire... do not make clear... do not teach.

And in some cases, I do make an effort to explain the step-by-step method to arrive at the solution. I've not had many notes of thanks from these questioners - but I've had a few - and each is a heart-warming event.

You sort of need to determine for yourself where you stand - what you feel is ''helping'' too much - or what constitutes cheating. You have to live with yourself.

For the most part - I would submit that you will see the majority of the TCs here definitely encourage students to use their own resources first.

Worthwhile for on-going discussion, though...

If someone asks me:

How do I tackle this problem?

f(x) = (2x - 3)... blah blah blah

I have the choice of explain to them how to tackle the problem or... ignoring the question.

What I do not do is give a one-line:

"The answer is 42"

(unless, of course, the question is about a certain book by Douglas Adams)

Having been a professional, a teacher and a dean, I know that kids are often overwhelmed by problems for which they have not been given the proper tools in class, by teachers who are given too many hours of teaching or too many students per class (or who are stuck teaching a topic that they are not prepared for -- it happens).

Also, most kids on this continent have not even been taught how to write properly, so that even through the formulation of their questions here, you can't tell if they are trying to cheat, or if they simply do not know how to ask for help.

If you see a question like:

"Using the Rational Root Theorem, find the solution to..."

is the question from a kid who is lazy and wants us to do the problem? or is the question from a kid who, after a boring day with a teacher who does not understand the theory, would like someone to finally explain what the heck is this theorem about?

If it is the former, then there is nothing I can do to keep this kid from cheating all his life. It is not as if Yahoo!Answers is the ONLY way to cheat (it is still better than the way that was used in my time: find the class nerd and beat the answers out of him). In this case, giving the answer will probably help some poor nerd to not get beat up... today.

If it is the latter, then I might as well give it a try, in the (sometimes vain) hope that at least one more kid will finally understand the Rational Root theorem.

In any case, with a well-prepared homework, a good teacher can (usually) tell who is cheating and who is not.

I totally agree with an acception. Caution should sent to those who use any information from this blog. In the end they are asking for the Best Answer, not the Correct Answer. Asking a question whether from here or any place else is called research. Learning how to find an answer is fundementally more important then remembering one. Most test are memory driven. In the real world though one has to know how to find the answer and then validate the answer in their own head and work the problem to see if it's plausable. One of my biggest concerns is people just parroting statements they heard or learned from a book. It may very well be just an opinion, not a fact. Just because a statement was made from a well known author doesn't make it so or scientific.

This has occurred to me too. Whenever I answer one of these questions, I do my best to point the person in the general direction of the answer without doing the work for them yet often somebody will just give them the answer. With equations, I provide another example to show the method.

Answering the entire thing is doing the student no favours - they are not learning the thinking skills involved and giving their teacher a false impression of what they know. I have even seen multiple choice questions offered up, questions which, with just a tiny application of thought, were easily answered. I do not answer questions which some lazy kid could just Google or those requiring an essay to be written as an answer.

Sometimes I thin it is a misguided attempt to help, others, a wish to show off or collect points. Whatever the reason, contributors generally should not help the skivers!

One learns by using the available sources. That may include the textbook, lecture notes, other texts, asking friends or parents for help, the library, and the internet. Sometimes it takes using more than one source for one to understand a concept. A responder here may provide a more understandable explanation and/or more helpful sources.

If one just copies a few sentences from the text, a journal, a friend, or the internet and does not understand it, there is little or no learning taking place. While homework may have some influence on the final grade in a class, the greatest portion comes from test scores.

It is not cheating to use as many available sources as practical to learn. No one doing homework is doing original research. They are reading the results of research done by others over the years. Even those who do true original research, begin by studying the writings of those who proceeded them.

Really good observations! When I first came on this site, I would answer a few of these questions, until I caught on to the fact that I was just aiding and abetting cheating. Being asked to help explain a principle is helping a student, but giving them the answer to a multiple guess question or the answer to a math problem is outright cheating.

About the "top contributor" designation... it has nothing to do with the quality or accuracy of your answers, only the quantity. I am sometimes listed as a top contributor, based primarily on the number of answers I give in the "Cats" category (no pun intended). My very intelligent and loyal Ocicat is here with me as I write, and she approved this message.

Meh. It doesn't seem to be that great of a problem here. Answerers don't seem to like doing someone else's homework for them. I take the approach of trying to point the asker in a direction where they can solve the problem themselves. This has interesting results, because some askers are genuinely thankful for being able to understand, and it pisses off the get-over artists.

How do you know that someone is asking questions for homework? People often ask questions that people say are for "homework," when they are not.

Also, even if it was for homework, I don't see why it should matter. Homework is about people learning something new, and if someone here can answer that question, and the student learns, then it's a good thing.

The real reason, though, is because you can't always tell if it is for homework, and it would not be good if a person who is genuinely asking a specific question would not get an answer, just because people think it might be for a homework. Some people really are curious and like to ask specific questions.

Well first, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that anybody on here is what they say they are. It's the internet, you can say what you want, and nobody can prove otherwise - and the more confident and authoritative you are, the more likely people are to believe it. You see the ferret in my avatar picture? I taught him to read, and he went on to a multiple Ph.D.'s in physics related fields. He feeds me information for answering questions in this section (he never learned to type, so it takes him a very long time to submit answers on his own). This statement is no less plausible than a lot of what people say on here.

Top contributor is a popularity contest, not necessarily an honor, in any category.

I agree that if you're on here handing out answers to homework, you're not helping anybody. Nobody learns to fish by being handed a bucket full of fish. I don't think you see it nearly as much in this category as certain others though - namely, Physics, Mathematics, and Engineering are full of people retyping homework questions and others typing them full, worked out solutions. I see accepting one of these solutions, at the collegiate level, as a blatant violation of the honor code which most universities have.