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I never understood how to properly mark questions like this. A person bellow marked it as

"Questions asking for homework help must include a summary of the work you've done so far to solve the problem, and a description of the difficulty you are having solving it."

and I completely agree but can't seem to find this option anywhere.

I'm also adding a screenshot as this question will likely get deleted.

enter image description here

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  • Too broad / unclear should suffice.
    – user0042
    Commented Dec 15, 2017 at 17:18
  • 1
    @Chicken Answer on that page does not say how to flag a question about homework at all...
    – erikvimz
    Commented Dec 15, 2017 at 17:23
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    @Eric the fact that it's a homework is completely irrelevant here. We don't close homework questions BECAUSE they are homework questions. We close homework questions that are off-topic for the site. There are a LOT of ways to make a good quality, on topic question from a homework.
    – Patrice
    Commented Dec 15, 2017 at 17:26
  • @Eric It does. See the very last bullet point in the answer: "As for non-homework questions, questions in the spirit of "plz send teh codez" might be closed as "too broad". Use your best judgment. Remember students are new programmers and often don't yet understand what is expected of them on this site. Help them to get that understanding."
    – user247702
    Commented Dec 15, 2017 at 17:28
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    @Chicken I read the full answer, I know it mentions the "too broad" flag, but that bullet has nothing to do with this particular question.
    – erikvimz
    Commented Dec 15, 2017 at 17:29
  • It's a question in the spirit of "plz send teh codez", don't you agree?
    – user247702
    Commented Dec 15, 2017 at 17:30
  • Alright I guess you're right. I gotta work on my judgement skills. Thanks everyone for clarifying.
    – erikvimz
    Commented Dec 15, 2017 at 17:35
  • @Chicken you're misinterpretting that. You're reading it as "plz send teh codez" === "too broad" where in reality it is more that questions in that vein tend towards being overly broad, They may not be overly broad though. They might be perfectly acceptable, or they might be off-topic for any other reason. The point being that we close questions for the reasons listed in the close dialog, not because we've lumped them into a category of questions that happens to contain off-topic questions. If that were the case, we would have no questions.
    – user4639281
    Commented Dec 15, 2017 at 20:00

2 Answers 2

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That's comprehensive enough that you can safely flag it as "too broad". The text that is quoted is just text from a help article (which the quotation itself links to) that doesn't actually correspond to a (canned) close reason.

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  • That's what I wanted to know. I thought there was an option that I'm missing that automatically adds that text. Thank you for explaining.
    – erikvimz
    Commented Dec 15, 2017 at 17:26
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As I have voted to close a bunch of such questions, I have some experiences:

  • If the question is a full assignment dump, flag as too broad or unclear what you're asking.

  • If the question contains the assignment and a code asking for help without clearly stating which part of the code needs help, flag as off-topic → Reason 4 (Questions about "Why this code isn't working" ...)

If the question matches several criteria above, flagging as any corresponding option is fine.

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  • We already have a general reference for homework questions. One that the community debated for quite some time in order to come to an appropriate compromise. At this point, meta questions about how to handle homework questions in general should be closed as a duplicate of the general reference question. The only useful new meta questions about homework questions concern specific homework questions. Thus, the only useful new meta answers about homework questions address the specific question, then defer to the general reference question for how to handle homework questions in general.
    – user4639281
    Commented Dec 15, 2017 at 19:53

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