casiopea>
I support -RonBee-a teacher, and moderator-in his willingness to help this student (as s/he has already completed the assignment, and is merely looking for correction), but this thread seems identical to the post you locked, it is even by the same poster, can you explain the material difference? I don't doubt for a second it was recognised as an assignment.
http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/as...-exercise.html
No amount of experience (and certainly not the mere 20 years you have), teaching or otherwise will allow you to difinitively recognise that a question is
not on graded work. The only way to absolve yourself of culpability would be to require the poster to read and confirm a disclaimer not to ask such questions, or state otherwise in each question.
Casiopea> You said:
"If it doesn't look like an assignment, and if the poster doesn't say that it's an assignment, then we have no other choice but to give the poster the benefit of the doubt."
Your lesson to posters is "test questions welcome, just don't
tell us that's what they are". I can think of several controversial issues on which I wish my government would take a similar "don't ask, don't tell" stance.
Casiopea>
"Letter of the law" is writer's license as evidenced by the quotation marks. I don't know if you recognised that.
Casiopea> You wrote:
"You are not a teacher and yet you chose to post as if you were a teacher."
I most certainly did not, and by your own reasoning. I did not
say that I was a teacher, therefore I could not be assumed to
be one. Nor did I respond to questions explicitly directed to teachers without disavowing my status as one.
We do not assume everyone in a police station is a police officer until they tell us otherwise, that's why they wear badges.(How about a teacher "badge" on the forums?)
Casiopea>
Where in the forum rules is it written: "Posters may not ask or answer test/homework questions"?
Casiopea>
There is often a gulf, between what is written and what is read, as evidenced by the sometimes tragically misconstrued "mastication". The absence of voice, and preconceived notions of the reader play as much a part in this as anything else.
Casiopea>
The fact that there is more to teaching than knowing the rules is by no definition "ironic", as you claim. Nor is it ironic that there is more to teaching than holding the title.
Cassiopeia>
Mere proximity is not enough of an incentive for me to meet you, but I'm sure we will go on to become well acquainted and fine friends in the months to come. I'm finishing up my bachelor's at a local university, and will be around for some time. I would not at all be opposed to meeting at some later date, perhaps.
In the meantime, yours or any other person's answer to the first question in this post is awaited with humility and patience.
And as an aside, I'm still waiting for further information (or the formal refusal of it) for the warning you issued me by way of private message.