Reorganizing Homework Help forums

[Ben Niehoff]

It seems that everyone simply assumes that their problem is "advanced" if they can't figure out how to solve it (hell, the title of their high school physics course might even be "Advanced Physics"). I'm tired of seeing simple Newtonian mechanics problems in the Advanced forum. A simpler classification scheme (for the drive-by help-wanted poster) would involve three forums:

1. High School Physics
2. Undergraduate Physics
3. Graduate Physics

Then there can be no mistake (except for the occasional person taking remedial physics in college). Of course, people still won't read.

Some improvements could possibly be made to this suggestion. Feel free to add.

 

[cristo]

What happens when the student is from a country other than the US, who have a level between high school and undergraduate?

 

[Ben Niehoff]

Good point.

Perhaps more specific forum descriptions would help? And be sure to use "big scary words" in the description for the Advanced section...

 

[Moonbear]

We used to have the homework help forums organized by high school and university level. It was worse than the current system. Someone taking basic non-calc based physics for liberal arts majors would post in the university forum and get overwhelmed with calculus, while someone in a good calc-based AP physics course in high school would post in the high school forum. There's too much overlap between high school and university courses for that designation to make any sense.

When you see simple intro physics material posted in advanced physics, just report it. We move them around as needed. It's still a lot less moving than when it was high school vs university (especially since other countries teach different levels in those years too).