Student forum needed?

[chaosd]

I've just been running through the list of 'Newbie' questions, and I think that there are a few lazy students lurking on this board. I don't think anything as draconian as this is required, but I think that any real newbies would be put off by the lack of replies in the newbie section.

I also think that if people are going to cut and paste assignments like this:

what role do the numbers known as the user-id and group-id play in controlling access to files and other resources by processes under the unix operating system? explain how these ids are intially determined and how and under what circumstances they might be changed. discuss any special problems that might be associated with the use of such ids in a networked environment

i wish u would kindly answer this question

the answer should be more of a 'where to look' than a 'how-to', but I only want to play tutor if I've got time - whereas a real balls-against-the-wall question derserves at least half a chance of being answered in full.

Posting in the wrong forum should, of course, be met with a 'RTFM', or in extreme cases, sarcasm

[UnixMan]

I agree - while I'm very happy if this forum helps anyone who is trying to learn UNIX or solve a particular problem, I don't think people just posting their homework/assignments on the forum and expecting to receive answers is particularly useful.

In my own answers to questions which are obviously homework ("explain what the following 30 UNIX commands do", or some such, for example), I've tried to answer in terms of "use the man pages, do some research on your own, and please feel free to come back with more specific questions after that".

I will certainly consider a "student forum" for students who may want to post their homework questions, in the hopes of getting help from someone. I may also expand the guidelines for how to use this site a little! For example, I've noticed that threads with specific titles like "how to mount a remote filesystem" tend to get more page views, and thus are more likely to get useful answers, than those with titles like "pls can u help me fast"! I've renamed threads to something more useful, on a few occasions!

Another thing I would love people to do is to reply to their own threads, if they subsequently find the solution to their question elsewhere. There's nothing more annoying than searching Google, and finding a question that exactly matches what you're trying to find out, only to discover it has not been answered! So maybe I need to write some more thorough guidelines to refer people to, to make the site as useful as possible.

Thanks chaosd for your contributions to the site over the last few days, and for clearing up a few unanswered threads.