Question: It seems there are the beginnings of an edit war going on with [how can counting the number of cracks in glass tell you about the speed of imact?](https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/78191).

Now the question has a few problems:

* It doesn't stand particularly well on its own, requiring reading an external link for background.
* It doesn't discuss the question in such a way as to guide answers to the desired level of detail.
* It is partially phrased in the imperative, rather than the interrogative.

**However**, as far as I can tell, **it has nothing to do with homework**, either in actuality or conceptually. Someone was reading a scientific news article and had a question about the physics behind a phenomenon. It certainly doesn't sound like someone wants a particular problem solved - I read it as asking for the concepts behind some claim.

So **why was this tagged as homework?** Is the new policy to use [homework](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/homework "show questions tagged 'homework'") to filter out questions certain users don't particularly like?

Answer: 
My take on this is two-fold:

First, don't start edit wars. If you put something on a question, and somebody later removes it, don't just go back in and put it back again and leave comments about it. Take it to meta, take it to chat, and actually discuss it rather than take it out to 7 revisions. When people disagree, use the channels we have to resolve it face-to-face (or I suppose keyboard-to-keyboard). 

Second, I do not think that is a homework question. Not just in the strict sense but in the sense we defined. OP is looking for a physical concept that is not understood to be explained. It's no different than the myriad of questions about how we know gravity exists, why there are only 4 dimensions in space-time, etc.. To me, the OP doesn't understand the physical correlation between impact velocity and fracture in glass and would like an understanding of the concepts behind it. 

So I do not think it should be tagged as homework. All that said, I think the question is poorly formed because it doesn't mention what part is confusing, asks answers to go read an article rather than summarize it, and shows very little effort. It should be downvoted, maybe closed, but that's a different conversation.
Dimension10 has given the [link](https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/714/how-do-i-ask-homework-questions-on-physics-stack-exchange) to where the policy is laid out clearly in David's answer:

> 
> What kinds of questions are considered homework questions?
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> A "homework question" is any question whose value lies in helping you understand the method by which the question can be solved, rather than getting the answer itself. This includes not just questions from actual homework assignments, but also self-study problems, puzzles, etc.
> 
> 
> On the other hand, questions that come up in the course of doing a homework problem, but are separate from the main point of the problem, might not be considered homework questions. There's a bit of a judgment call to be made, depending on the context of the problem. If you're not sure, it's probably safer to treat your question as a homework question and later find out that it isn't, than the other way around.
> 
> 
> 

Which points out that the dividing line is rather vague, and therefore could make most of the questions here homework if we relied on this definition, rather than our own personal view based upon common experience

As I understand it, the whole point of the homework tag is to enable people to filter out the tedious **unoriginal** questions found in most text books. Therefore, I don't think any problem thought up by someone for themselves should be tagged homework, unless it's universally recognized as a standard text book problem designed for students.

update:
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It turns out that the main purpose behind the homework tag is to prevent students cheating on their homework assignments, which should make things considerably clearer on when to tag a question as homework: **Does this question look as if it could be given to a student by a teacher as a graded exercise?**