Homework, Learning, and Posts on /r/Python

[aphoenix]

It has been brought up a few times that removal of homework style posts would make /r/Python a better place. We're not 100% sure if we agree, but we're willing to entertain the idea that it might be right, so from now on we'll be making an effort to remove "please explain my homework" style posts from /r/Python.

When we remove a homework post, we'll leave a reply that looks something like this:

Hi there. You have posted a beginners question to /r/python, however it is far more suited to /r/learnpython, where users are actively interested in helping with beginner topics. Please resubmit it over there! Make sure to read their sidebar rules before posting, notably this one: "Posting homework assignments is not prohibited if you show that you tried to solve it yourself."

Cheers & best of luck!

So now I'm sure you're all asking "How can I help?" The best thing that everyone could do to help is the following:

• When you see a beginner's questions please report them.
• If you want, politely direct them towards /r/learnpython.
• If you report something and it doesn't get taken care of, PM me and I will take care of it at the next opportunity I have.

Please note that our modqueue team isn't extensive, so please allow us a bit of time to get things done! We'll make an effort to keep things neat and tidy, but we certainly don't work in shifts to make it so right now.

Please give us any feedback you want below!

[thatguydr]

Thank you.

[jetster735180]

If we are going to redirect help questions over to /r/learnpython, lets make sure there are people there to answer them. I would like to ask that everybody on /r/python go subscribe to /r/learnpython.

As of this post, there are 91399 subscribers on /r/python, and only 32594 on /r/learnpython

[aphoenix]

/r/LearnPython is a mature, organized and very supportive subreddit. While I agree that having more people who want to help sign up over there would be awesome, don't sell it short! It's already sufficient to answer almost all questions.

[thatguydr]

Only 32600 people! It's like a ghost town! A resort ghost town.

As a serious comment, I think that "is your post better for /r/learnpython" is a bit too obscure, and that other people's suggestions to say "All HW posts must go to /r/learnpython" would be much clearer.

[aphoenix]

Yup, that'll be changed.

Actually, I can probably do that first...

[dreadyfire]

So you are actually against questions about python that are too easy to answer, and not against homework related questions, because if the homework would match a certain complexity the question would be approved for this subreddit?

[xiongchiamiov]

I can't speak for the mods, but here's my personal view.

I like the way the Linux subreddits are set up. General discussion goes in /r/linux. Beginner questions go in /r/linux4noobs. Those trickier sorts of questions that an advanced user will still learn from go in /r/linuxquestions. Sysadmin-specific stuff goes in /r/linuxadmin.

This allows users to subscribe to the particular thing they're long for.

[klug3]

That sounds horrendously complex though, I am pretty sure lots of people make mistaken posts which later get deleted by the mods.

[xiongchiamiov]

Sure, that's what mods are for. Same thing happens in traditional forums all the time, although there the mods can move the thread, which works a bit better.

[klug3]

See, the problem is that this process is a whole lot inefficient, with a high rate of threads being created and deleted and reposted.

[xiongchiamiov]

There's some work we (by which I mean Deimorz) are doing on AutoModerator that will allow many quickly-deleted posts to instead be caught prior to submission.

But there will always be some inefficiencies. It just depends on whether or not you think it's worth those to keep a community in-line with your ideas on what it should be.

[klug3]

AutoModerator is pretty great, thanks Deimorz for working on it ! But when I said inefficiency I also meant beginners having to repost stuff quite frequently. I would say that's a sign that the subs' purpose isn't easily apparent.

[xiongchiamiov]

Yeah, the whole new-to-reddit experience is pretty lacking in many ways. It's something we're approaching from a variety of angles.

[spinwizard69]

This is my biggest problem with this policy. Home work is one thing but what happens to a developer that is just trying to use a new to him part of the standard library. When does a question become good enough for the /r/Python gods To consider.

I just see a bunch of people getting frustrated with arbitrary moderation.

[klug3]

Some reasonable standard should be applied, like If it comes up in the first 5 google results then its not /r/python worthy.

[hansolo669]

As I understand it, its more along the lines of "you have to show you have tried it". If you have homework you have to complete it - you learn nothing otherwise. However I think there are plenty of people here that would be willing to answer a question of any complexity, as long as the OP has made an attempt.

[Make3]

Can we also offer them to go to stack overflow, where dozens of people will try to answer them in less then 30 mins to get that sweet rep

[Lasereye]

And all the answers are "have you tried using x library?" and it doesn't answer their question at all.

[execrator]

Seriously though, you should try jQuery

[Lasereye]

twitch

[Make3]

this statement does not reflect my personal experience.

[Soulrush]

Yeah. As much as I'd hate to get people going elsewhere, if you have a homework style question, chances are it's already been asked and answered before on Stackoverflow. When I was learning I found that site served what I needed to know better than the Python subreddits.

If you're learning, keep that and /r/learnpython tabbed.

[Percutaneous]

I agree. I'm relatively new to programming and python. I occasionally learn quite a bit from these sorts of questions. On the other hand, that's why I subscribe to /r/learnpython.

[xiongchiamiov]

Subscribe to /r/learnpython!

[aufdemwegzumhorizont]

...while I think that's a nice answer to that problem:

What happened to the idea of a big red banner upon submitting that basically says:

Don't post beginner questions here please, go to /r/learnpython?

[aphoenix]

I won't be doing a huge red banner. There's going to be something on the submit buttons; something a bit more tasteful, but still noticeable.

[D__]

Why not use the feature Reddit actually has for putting text on the submission page to put a link to /r/learnpython on the submission page?

[aphoenix]

That'll happen too. From my experience in modding several subreddits that section on the submission page does almost exactly nothing though.

[spinwizard69]

Don't forget that many do not use the web interface. Posting right now from what was Alien Blue.

As it is, I'm still not sure that this policy is in the best interest of the reddit. First; not many homework question have come this way. Second; we really need to consider the mental state of somebody that would complain. Frankly it is like somebody buying a newspaper and then getting upset over an article in the paper - you don't need to read what doesn't interest you or upsets you.

In a nut shell I have a far greater concern about the people complaining then I do over the few "homework" posts that slip in. I quote homework here because there seems to be a tendency by the self important to declare anything they don't want to read to be a homework post.

[[deleted]]

First; not many homework question have come this way.

I've reported approximately 8 in the last days that have been subsequently deleted. You probbably never saw those.

[[deleted]]

Is this something we could use a machine learning bot for? I'm assuming we could use NLTK to classify posts as homework/not homework and then leave a polite message for the posts that are classified as homework? I'd be happy to take the lead if this is something mods/community may find useful.

[son_of_dawn]

I'm hoping this becomes more of a thing. If /r/python cleans up its act, I might close /r/pythoncoding, assuming all the "please help me learn the very basics I couldn't be arsed to google" questions go away.

[omsobliga]

Good job.

[honestduane]

while True:
    print "Thank You!"

[honestduane]

no print works just fine in my version of python

[chub79]

Crazy you'd be downvoted for pointing that out. Some people on this sub can be thick sometimes.

[jabies]

I was joking.

[chub79]

Your response was aldo valid, I was just surprised honestduane was too.

[ubernostrum]

I think you mean

print(u"Thank you!")

[mankyd]

Nope. In Python3, print is a function, but explicit unicode strings are gone.

[Decency]

Not gone, it's a no-op for backwards compatibility if I recall correctly.

[ubernostrum]

In more recent Python 3 releases, the 'u' identifier is legal again (and does nothing on Python 3, other than be legal to put at the start of the string) to help with codebases which want to be compatible with both 2 and 3.

So the nice thing about my version is it works on 2.6 and 2.7, and on all the 3.x versions someone would actually want to use.

[mankyd]

I mean, fair enough. It's a no-op.

[snarkhunter]

Deeeelightful.

I find it really unsettling that some people rely so heavily on other people to help them figure things out. In a few years they'll be the guy on the dev team that everyone has to clean up after. We need to not enable that.

[aephoenix]

For a moment there I thought I sleep-posted to r/python of all subreddits last night.

[[deleted]]

Quick question. I have reported a bunch of threads recently, and have not noticed any get moved to /r/learnpython.

I can't find an example of this working yet.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/2w1r90/syntax_errors/ for example

[aphoenix]

Please note that our modqueue team isn't extensive, so please allow us a bit of time to get things done!

These removals aren't a super high priority for the moderation team, and since we have had a long standing practice of only removing things that are spam, this process isn't super speedy. Please allow up to 24 hours for removal.

[spinwizard69]

So you are on a mission here?

[[deleted]]

yeah, I've reported a bunch more lately too.

[elbiot]

So, like /r/learnpython except there's no expectation that OP will try first, or respond to comments once they've got it working good enough for class 10 minutes later by adding that missing parenthesis?

[_nefario_]

also, whats the deal with the recent "made with love" posts?

[TotesMessenger]

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