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I know from searching through the history here on meta that virtually every permutation of question regarding the [homework] tag has been discussed, but I could not find an answer to my question. Sorry if this one was in there somewhere and I missed it.

This question of mine was retagged as [homework]. I am self-studying and currently reading Apostol's calculus and doing all of the problems. My question is, should I be tagging my questions as homework since they are isomorphic to homework questions? In other words, is the homework tag for questions that are only literally homework, or is it to be interpreted broadly as questions of homework-type? I have been interpreting the tag as a literal one, so I detagged it as homework, and am now worried that I may have done something wrong, or should be doing something differently.

Thanks for the clarification.

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1 Answer

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The homework tag is indeed a literal one, and you should not be tagging your questions as homework unless they are actually assigned to you. While it is somewhat difficult to talk about the "policies" of math.SE given that it is mostly user-run, the consensus among the more senior users seems to be that the homework tag runs on the honor system. I and many other users consider it inappropriate to tag another user's question as homework unless they have explicitly said it is homework. I learned this from experience, when I retagged a user's fifth brief, imperative question as homework and was corrected on this by several of math.SE's most senior users.

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Thanks for clarifying. Having it retagged felt vaguely accusatory, so I was concerned I had been misinterpreting the tag / otherwise doing something to offend. – rar Mar 19 '12 at 16:01
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@rar: Apologies for retagging this. Usually I am one of the ones who tries to remove the homework tag unless specified by OP. Even though I should not have done it, in this case retagging it was actually a compliment rather than an accusation! You seemed to be genuinely interested in learning the stuff, so I thought you might find it more beneficial if it was tagged as homework. Apologies. – Aryabhata Mar 19 '12 at 16:05
@Aryabhata No worries. I was really just concerned I had done something wrong or something considered vaguely dishonest. And, of course, I really am genuinely interested in learning this stuff, so I'll try to be more explicit when I post. Though I wouldn't ask a question until I'd thought about it / worked on it for 2-3 days, by which time I'm sort of indifferent to a hint or the solution. Most of the pedagogical value is in spending 2-3 days working on it without hints. – rar Mar 19 '12 at 16:36
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Well said. But I disagree about "should not...". If the OP wants to tag it as homework, so that they will tend to get more hints than full answers, then I see no problem with that. It's the opposite alternative that bothers some folks, i.e. not tagging homework as such, which could be viewed as cheating. But even in this case there is no consensus, since some esteemed members have argued strongly against homework policing, and even against giving hints. – Gone Mar 19 '12 at 21:50

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