🚀 go-pugleaf

debray@cs.arizona.edu (Saumya K. Debray) writes:

>torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen) writes:
>> I think it's high time to get rid of this "no homework" nonsense. Anybody
>> with any sense should ask the net for solutions to boring idiotic home
>> work. With a bit of luck somebody will supply the answer.
>
>I disagree vehemently, for the following reasons:
>
>1. Resources.  Solutions to "boring idiotic homework problems" are unlikely
>     to be of burning interest to the vast majority of people working
>     on/with logic programming languages.  I see little sense in using a
>     lot of computing and network resources worldwide to support this kind
>     of stuff.

For the minute amount of traffic we're considering, the people-time is far
more important than the machine resources.

>2. SNR.  Between four or five technical newsgroups, I have enough articles 
>     to wade through every morning that it takes up a fair amount of time
>     already.  I see little to be gained from increasing the volume and 
>     decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio further.

Quite fair enough. What about creating a new newsgroup for elementary-level
Prolog questions? Something like "comp.prolog.questions", or
"comp.prolog.novices". Alternatively it could be in the "alt" hierarchy,
which would also mean that (1) would nopt be a problem.

>3. Ethics.  In my opinion, anyone who (actively or passively) aids and abets
>     an act of plagiarism is just as guilty of cheating as the person who 
>     actually tries to pass off someone else's work as his own (in my
>     classes, it's standard policy that all such "participants in academic
>     dishonesty" get a failing grade for the entire course immediately and
>     without exception).  The point does not change just because the medium
>     has changed from pencil and paper to something more high tech.

Obviously no-one here would condone plaigiarism (I hope!); the point was,
however, that elementary-level questions often get a somewhat hostile
response here.

-- 
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