We have reinstated a formal statement of policy advising that people do not ask or answer homework questions. It is at http://www.statalist.org/forums/help#adviceextras
If you want to know more, read as far as you feel inclined.
Some recent threads have posted homework questions and asked for help.
All the replies that I have seen from experienced members explained a personal policy of not helping with homework. (In addition, and worth noting, is the obvious fact that many people just ignored the requests.)
Statalist has been in existence since 1994 and has posted generic advice as its FAQ Advice in one form or another for most of that time. Sometimes there are little flurries of one kind of behaviour that seems inappropriate and we post advice of the form "Please don't do X, and here's why" (with whatever positive advice we can add).
When modified like this the FAQ Advice tends to grow and in turn every now and again we slim it down, cutting out advice that no longer seems of primary importance.
We're all busy people and those who maintain the FAQ, at present myself but in consultation with several others, want the FAQ Advice to be concise but also comprehensive, ideals that are difficult to satisfy together. (Some may sympathise with the once prominent member, long since departed, who complained first that the FAQ was badly written and then that he hadn't had the time ever to read it.)
By 2014 when Statalist was re-launched as this forum, requests to do homework had become rare, so we cut it out. Now that there has been a new flurry of such questions, we thought we should reinstate such a policy statement if only so that people could point to a policy.
This has not seemed contentious in the past, but the world is full of surprises.
Who is we? would be a fair question here.
In a strong sense, Statalist is run by StataCorp and we all depend on that. StataCorp are responsible for occasional sharp decisions that you may never have even noticed, such as removing spam (very rare) and removing very offensive posts (even rarer, less than once per year). Although I am billed as FAQ maintainer, I could not change a single word of the FAQ without passing it by StataCorp, so there are checks and balances.
In another equally strong sense, Statalist is just run by its members. Posting a question and trying to follow guidelines is itself a positive contribution to the list. Asking someone else to post a dataset example or show their code or anything like that is a positive contribution to the list. Answering questions is a positive contribution! And so on. Everyone who contributes positively, which means almost everybody, helps to run the list.
But if you disagree with our practices, or our principles, then what could you do?
1. Post on Statalist and explain why you disagree. Then the discussion begins.
2. Post directly to the list administrators. That's a good method if you have a complaint about named individuals.
3. Find a forum more congenial to you. That's not meant aggressively! Statalist doesn't try to suit all tastes and its presumptions about what you should and should not do may seem ill-judged to you. Other forums such as Cross Validated, Stack Overflow, TalkStats or Quora may work more to your taste. Note that many people here participate in some of those forums, so commitment to Statalist doesn't rule out anything else.
If you want to know more, read as far as you feel inclined.
Some recent threads have posted homework questions and asked for help.
All the replies that I have seen from experienced members explained a personal policy of not helping with homework. (In addition, and worth noting, is the obvious fact that many people just ignored the requests.)
Statalist has been in existence since 1994 and has posted generic advice as its FAQ Advice in one form or another for most of that time. Sometimes there are little flurries of one kind of behaviour that seems inappropriate and we post advice of the form "Please don't do X, and here's why" (with whatever positive advice we can add).
When modified like this the FAQ Advice tends to grow and in turn every now and again we slim it down, cutting out advice that no longer seems of primary importance.
We're all busy people and those who maintain the FAQ, at present myself but in consultation with several others, want the FAQ Advice to be concise but also comprehensive, ideals that are difficult to satisfy together. (Some may sympathise with the once prominent member, long since departed, who complained first that the FAQ was badly written and then that he hadn't had the time ever to read it.)
By 2014 when Statalist was re-launched as this forum, requests to do homework had become rare, so we cut it out. Now that there has been a new flurry of such questions, we thought we should reinstate such a policy statement if only so that people could point to a policy.
This has not seemed contentious in the past, but the world is full of surprises.
Who is we? would be a fair question here.
In a strong sense, Statalist is run by StataCorp and we all depend on that. StataCorp are responsible for occasional sharp decisions that you may never have even noticed, such as removing spam (very rare) and removing very offensive posts (even rarer, less than once per year). Although I am billed as FAQ maintainer, I could not change a single word of the FAQ without passing it by StataCorp, so there are checks and balances.
In another equally strong sense, Statalist is just run by its members. Posting a question and trying to follow guidelines is itself a positive contribution to the list. Asking someone else to post a dataset example or show their code or anything like that is a positive contribution to the list. Answering questions is a positive contribution! And so on. Everyone who contributes positively, which means almost everybody, helps to run the list.
But if you disagree with our practices, or our principles, then what could you do?
1. Post on Statalist and explain why you disagree. Then the discussion begins.
2. Post directly to the list administrators. That's a good method if you have a complaint about named individuals.
3. Find a forum more congenial to you. That's not meant aggressively! Statalist doesn't try to suit all tastes and its presumptions about what you should and should not do may seem ill-judged to you. Other forums such as Cross Validated, Stack Overflow, TalkStats or Quora may work more to your taste. Note that many people here participate in some of those forums, so commitment to Statalist doesn't rule out anything else.
