Improvement Idea: Put Homework Help at Top of Discussions

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Placing homework help at the top of discussions could reduce the number of students posting homework questions in inappropriate forums. Users suggest encouraging meaningful titles for posts to improve clarity and asking members to keep their questions within a single thread to avoid confusion. There is also a proposal to limit the use of the word "help" in homework post titles to streamline discussions. The forum has experienced an influx of new members, contributing to some disorganization. Implementing these suggestions could enhance the overall user experience.
Norman
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Just an idea:

Why not put the homework help at the top of the different discussions? That way you may not see so many students posting homework questions to other forums. It took me a couple of visits to figure out it was there, so I am guessing I wasn't the only one.
Cheers
 
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A few more ideas...

Here are a few more ideas for improvement:

- Encourage people to post their questions in only one forum at a time! If they chose wrongly, have them ask a mentor to move it to the correct place.

- Encourage people to title their posts meaningfully. Too many posts are titled: Help! :smile: This makes it hard to remember what the thread is about.

- Encourage people to keep their question within a single thread. Sometimes, if no response is immediately forthcoming, someone will repost their question in a new thread. This leads to people answering the same basic question in different threads on the same forum. Confusion reigns!
 
Amen to that, Doc.
We're on it...but with a great influx of new members recently, you'll need to expect some of that kind of thing to be present.
 
Use of certain word/letter combinations has been blocked for use in user titles --- is it possible/convenient to block use of the word "help" in the HW post titles? Particularly with exclamation points, or "urgent."
 
Originally posted by Bystander
Use of certain word/letter combinations has been blocked for use in user titles
Interesting... What's blocked?
 
Things such as 'PF mentor' :)
 
I want to thank those members who interacted with me a couple of years ago in two Optics Forum threads. They were @Drakkith, @hutchphd, @Gleb1964, and @KAHR-Alpha. I had something I wanted the scientific community to know and slipped a new idea in against the rules. Thank you also to @berkeman for suggesting paths to meet with academia. Anyway, I finally got a paper on the same matter as discussed in those forum threads, the fat lens model, got it peer-reviewed, and IJRAP...
About 20 years ago, in my mid-30s (and with a BA in economics and a master's in business), I started taking night classes in physics hoping to eventually earn the science degree I'd always wanted but never pursued. I found physics forums and used it to ask questions I was unable to get answered from my textbooks or class lectures. Unfortunately, work and life got in the way and I never got further the freshman courses. Well, here it is 20 years later. I'm in my mid-50s now, and in a...

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