I'm pretty new to this forum and was surprised at an early tone of response given to a student asking for some plant identification. Eventually the reason for not helping was provided by another forum member as against forum rules. My question is what are the rules about helping/not helping a student? Apparently I need to go back to school as my searches didn't bring up rules themselves. Any direction on this?
Unfortunately, we don't really help with school projects in that way - i.e., giving out the answers. I suppose it comes from a philosophy that the point of schooling is that you make the effort to learn, instead of having the answers handed to you. Apologies, but closing thread. Found this quote fron Daniel {Lord and master of list} back in 2007. I fed school project, assignment would be another into the thread search at top right hand of page with all the new threads Liz
Thanks, Liz & Joclyn, for the threads. I'm quite willing to follow the forum's rules, just expected them to be listed somewhere, such as with the charter and rules about commercial useage. The tone of a response to a student got me wondering why not just help or pass the thread by; now I see there is a reason for not helping (still feel the tone was unnecessary, just state the rule and move on is all that's called for). Again, thanks for the pointer.
Yes, they really ought to be in the forum rules. However, it pretty often comes down to my discretion. I may not have read the thread you are referring to in your original post, yet - I was away for a few weeks, and I'm still catching up on my forum reading (late March to the end of May are the busiest times on the forums).
Ok, I've just completed wading through the 4500 postings backlog I've had from the past month. I did Plant ID forum last of all, so I've only just seen the thread in question. First off, yes, the initial replies to the poster were a bit more direct than I'd like to see on these boards. Secondly, though, given the previous approaches to these sorts of queries, and had I been a more active moderator on the weekends (and perhaps up to date on my forums reading), I would have closed the thread down much earlier because of the homework issue. I think what I'll do is post a poll to see what people think... The thread in question from above, for reference sake.
ok, not trying to make a big deal of it. Initially just wanted to be able to quote the rule and reference a place for the student to read it, then started hunting because I couldn't find it. Thanks for looking at this.
Sometimes a push in the right direction might be a useful thing for a budding botanist. But to openly answer each thing is not a good idea. I use snippets from here to get information from other sources. So they should learn this way as well. If you have to do the work it's more likley to stay put than if spoon fed. Liz
