Hello,
I came across a comment on a Stack Overflow page that got me thinking:
This is not a question, this is a task. SO is not your free coding service, please show your attempt and describe why it failed.
I feel that having a policy against posting tasks rather than questions might help solve some of the challenges this forum has dealing with homework and might encourage better practices in general.
To be clear: I think that any question is good and should be encouraged and I do not attempt to bring some of the SO harshness into this very friendly forum. By "task" the comment author means to post a problem and expect people to solve it for them.
People who attempted to solve a problem are welcome to seek help understanding why their attempts are not successful. Or ask about alternative approaches. Or ask for guidance as to how to get started. Or ask specific questions about a function, or syntax, or some code, etc. All these are questions.
The only thing that would be out of bound with this policy would be posting a problem (homework or otherwise) and expecting to have it solved (i.e. posting a task).
Happy to hear your thoughts!