I understand the word homework is just a colloquialism for 'do the work yourself first' but it suffers from ambiguity and cannot be used in a generalizable sense without protest. Homework is ill-defined and confusing as a judgment call. And it's a close reason that is often revisited in discussion (this compilation from 7 years ago...).
For this reason I agree with OP and AliceD above, let's rewrite this already. I'd happily compile every suggestion or curate adjustments or track suggestions and arguments for/against each so we can simply vote on it.
I hope to provoke some disagreement with the following, but I trust there won't be any:
- Most of us are in favor of answering homework questions to help the questioner.
- Most think that disallowing or discouraging well-posed homework questions is silly.
- Most understand that the intended goal is closing low-effort questions.
- We agree question effort is entirely perpendicular to whether they constitute homework or not.
- We agree that question effort is judged subjectively, but so are judgments of "insufficient detail" or "insufficient focus", which are acceptable and existing close reasons.
With those in mind, I propose the following close reason:
Question posed with insufficient effort. The questioner must show
background research and motivate why the answer remains unclear to them
after attempting to understand it.
Hot or not? Let's polish it or suggest alternatives to get there once and for all. Many won't believe it possible. But I believe. We can do it, together.