Ok, okokok I went and looked up Pithy

The idea is that they go to where the information is, bring that information to BAUT for clarity and knowledge.

I don't see this as always the application. If someone asks about when is a good time to look at Jupiter, they might be able to google that or wiki that- but they will miss out on the experiences that the forum can tell about.

I disagree with Mugs that any information should be looked up first. I mean that's a bit of fun on BAUT.

The problem arises when folks come to BAUT seeking an education.
Realistically, you need to read about and understand the fundamentals of some topics before you can discuss it.
Otherwise, the discussion breaks down.

What if they don't want to? It's not that simple for millions of people to move out of a disaster, and make sure that they get food, water, shelter, health care, and education for their kids.

Welcome to BAUT by the way Mugaliens was trying very hard to be helpful?

What can I say? I can relate to it.

And I can't help but think that because the deliver can easily be attacked-- Does this mean the message gets lost?

I didn't intend to attack, I was just trying to be funny, but you gave me an idea and now I have to share this post that I found. Because... it is funny

Mugaliens post number 16:

That IS funny...

And no, I misled you just then... I didn't mean you had attacked- I meant the OP was attackable.

I'm starting to understand some of the frustration behind "homework questions" from this thread. I'm being continually asked simple questions that could be answered in 2 seconds with a quick google search. Note that this isn't astronomy-based, but is frustrating nonetheless. Even the links that I do provide go ignored. This diverts me from the actual meat of the debate that has to do with the original topic.

I'm not going to "boycott" all "homework questions", but it's starting to get to a point where I'm not sure if the discussion in question is even worth it.

__________________
"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

Too much meat is unhealthy for you anyway...

You actually had to think about that one?

__________________
"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

Had to.
I'm made out of meat.

Even my brain is made out of meat. Probed all the way through. All meat.
I think with my meat. Thinking meat. Loving meat. Dreaming meat. It's meat I tell you!

That's why we can't have nice aliens.

__________________

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for dilutions WAY beyond Avogadro's Limit. It's New! It's Fresh!
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After reading other's opinions (I do that sometimes), I find I'm definitely on the side of not boycotting 'homework' questions. I was on the fence before - my initial post here was couched in terms of devil advocacy.

On another forum not at all like BAUT, I have worked hard to contain drive-by, thread-creating newbie posts. They always get spliced to existing threads whenever possible. The goal is to keep the forum readable and searchable. Some have complained that they don't want to work at participating in the forum (work in that case meaning doing a competent search first before creating a thread).

Similar thing here - it's suggested that newbies should do their own homework before coming to BAUT to ask questions. But the relevant differences between the two situations I'm comparing are twofold. First, we have a section - Q&A - specifically designed for these questions. Second, BAUT moderators and admins make no attempt to organize threads beyond the forum structure (i.e., moving threads from one section to another, as appropriate to their content). So, if a newbie does a search here on a topic, it will likely result in a daunting number of hits. Too many to be managed, I think. Hence, a question pops up in a new thread.

As to asking newbies to go elsewhere to find the answers, I reject that easily. I want people to come to BAUT when they think of a science-related question. Even homework questions.

As stated innumerable times already, you can choose to answer the "why is the sky blue" questions or not. I avoid entire sections of BAUT because of the content.

As to the aside being discussed, I often shorten members names - Nev, Mugs, CC, Jim (oh, wait) - and find that mine gets shortened as well - geo, mostly. It's a familiarity and it's a good thing.

Yeah, it doesn't bother me if you want to shorten Neverfly to Nev. Some folks shorten it to Fly too.

Me, I prefer to lengthen names.
It's more interesting I think. What about you GeoNuclehead?

By the way- I think you nailed it about Boycotting, we should boycott some examples of persistence but not new questions from learning folks

Definitely, neverfrymeupsomebacon.

It'll give you cancer

I read recently that everything caused cancer.

The first law of animal experiments.
If you conduct an experiment on rats, they get cancer.

__________________
An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

For me, the most problematic assumption is that the respondents will be able to see through what are requests for help with homework, and what are not. I know I'm not particularly good at spotting them, though I have on occasion.
I do remember what were clearly, in retrospect, disguised requests for help with homework, posted by regular posters outside the Q&A forum. It took me a while to figure it out, though, and what I ultimately found most distasteful were not the requests themselves, but the fact that they were dissimulated, and that the 'strategy' of the requesters was to post vague, controversial questions, and then sit back and watch the argument unfold and (no doubt) take notes.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

One thing I've recently come to realize is that there are situations where Google and Wikipedia are utterly useless.
For instance, situations like this, where you have a picture of a place and wants to know what place it is.
And the similar one I'm in a lot at the moment, where I have a plant and want to know which it is and whether I should be bringing out the flamethrower or the fertilizer.
There's a bazillion pictures and descriptions of plants out there, but no key.

Or when you don't know the words, so can't come up with the right search terms.

Actually I've been thinking a bit if those two problems could be combined, to make a site where eg. a series of plant morphologies where shown as pictures for the user to select between, and the site built a search based on the technical terms for those, then used Google to look for a match and presented that as a possible answer.

__________________
An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

I know what you mean about identifying pictures, I've tried finding plane pictures and all you can do is wade through lots of images until you find one that matches.
re your plant finder, this one will identify British trees/shrubs which are similar to Danish ones;
http://www-saps.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/trees/index.htm (61kb) "A key for identifying British trees and shrubs"

I agree about needing to know the right words, I'm fairly savvy about astronomy and the English language but a friend of mine recently didn't know that the moon is visible during the dayime, and didn't believe me when I said it was. i told them to look on the interweb but they didn't know any terms to search. Thats why this site is so useful.

__________________
Life is its own god.

Can you please ask the voices in your head to keep the noise down?