People have also been wrong in their assumptions about what is homework; this is a demonstrable truth. In any case, I don't think nastiness is justified even in the case of blatant HW questions. If you want to vent, feel free to do so in a comment attached to a flag that the moderators will read!

By the way, I don't mind at all if someone wants to take a risk without pre-asking. I wouldn't pick between just asking versus pre-asking here as the more appropriate course. It's just the post-mortems that don't belong at MO (according to long-standing custom).

@Amir: There is a long history of usage of meta for this purpose dating back through MO.1 days. Of course, anyone who wants to just post at MO without pre-asking is welcome to do so, but for those people who would not rest content with having their questions closed without further discussion: the general idea is to keep MO for mathematics, and not to get into discussions about why a question was closed in MO comments, but rather to address them here.

Can you give an example? The only time I notice the year not being given is when it's from this year (e.g., 2013 as I write today).

Thank you, @AsafKaragila. Sorry to have forgotten that.

Yeah, could be. If it doesn't belong here, then it'd be very nice to suggest a better place for it.

One thing I thought might be improved in the question is the tagging. Suggestions are welcome.

@Carl Those are good points, but I don't equate an easy (easily answered) question with a poor question. If the question is very easy, I might answer in a comment (with an option of expanding later into an answer) until I see that others find it worthwhile for MO; i.e., until then I might be hedging my bets by answering quickly in a comment.

@quid Thanks -- I was too tired to hunt down the exact term when I last wrote.

@MichaelZieve Probably more the first. I might explain it by pointing to an analogous phenomenon whose usual name I don't recall, but I'll call it "irrational risk aversion": the sort of situation where if someone either offers you 20 dollars, or offers you a chance to bet 100 dollars with a 65% chance of winning in your favor, you'd still go with the sure deal. By that analogy, losing hard-earned points after having won them is felt more acutely than never having gained them in the first place. It might be irrational, but then you could say that the whole allure of the point system is too!

If a call for CW could trigger a (possibly temporary) hold on rep, then that would make me feel a lot better about the proposal. It's the subtraction of rep that I don't sit easy with. I don't know why exactly; something psychological about it.

I certainly agree about meta. I like even more Scott's suggestion: meta.mathoverflow.net/a/1059/2926

Generally speaking, I think policies where people suddenly lose rep through no fault of their own could prove very annoying to some. Better I think would be a mechanism where a questioner who intends to have a question be CW have that question sitting in a holding pen until a moderator can convert to CW, where it would then be opened.