It is obvious from the discussions here that people have not understood the significance of the 'Looks like homework' vote.

The vote is poorly named because, as we see here, this thread most certainly is "homework" - but is not deserving of a negative vote!

The negative vote is for cases where it is not just homework but, specifically, where the poster is trying to cheat by getting the forum to do the homework for him/her.
As such, the 'Looks like homework' vote really just duplicates 'Gimme Code' (also not well named) - so perhaps the two could be combined into a single, better-named vote?

The whole point of the votes was to allow people to give the "you should have searched first", etc, hints without clogging-up the forum with posts that just say, "you should have searched first".

Similarly, the positive votes save clogging-up the forum with post that just say "I agree" or "good point" - while demonstrating that the post has the support of more than just the poster.