<p>I agree with Tim's position that "Applying the self-study tag does not make a copy-and-pasted question a self-study question".</p>

<p>But I suppose there are some nuances in my position which I will elaborate as briefly as I can manage.</p>

<ul>
<li>Sometimes the question is part copy-and-paste from a book, and partly explanation of where the OP is stuck. I appreciate this type of question may not be what this Meta thread is mostly talking about, but it's common enough, and there is often no clear demarcation between where the C&amp;P ends and the OP's thoughts on the question begin, nor any indication of the source of the material. In this case, the question generally meets our self-study guidelines, is on-topic, and therefore merits the self-study tag. There's no harm asking the OP to read the self-study wiki so they have appropriate expectations of the kind of "getting unstuck but not giving it away on a plate" answers they'll receive. But in this situation a brief edit and tidy up (putting the source question in quote formatting, adding a reference to the source material if e.g. the OP has mentioned it in the comments or it turns up on a quick internet search) seems appropriate. It's often the case that doing this stuff for the OP takes less time than writing instructions for the OP on what I'd like them to do, the OP can still see our expectations of future questions from the way the question looks after editing, and I don't need to remember to check back in a couple of days' time to see if anything has been done. As far as I can tell, there's no harm including the self-study tag as part of this sprucing up.</li>
<li>Sometimes the question is pure copy-and-paste from a book and the question doesn't meet our self-study guidelines. I will leave a comment to the OP alerting them to our expectations, and vote to close as off-topic. If the OP fixes things up in short order, then hopefully the question will be saved from closure (or if it's too late for that, reopened) by other users on the review queue. Again, there is no need for me to check back. Adding the self-study tag doesn't seem to help much, so that might as well be left on the to-do list for the OP.* </li>
<li>If the question has been around for a long time, is blatantly self-study, and especially if the OP is no longer active, then I don't see any harm adding the self-study tag myself. This even applies to those questions which arguably should have been closed in the past, but have been around for so long, and have had good answers posted to them, that I can't see any point voting to close them. If it were a fresh question I might have voted to close, but in this case I might just edit and add the self-study tag (plus any other tidying up that needs to be done, and there's usually <em>something</em> beneficial to do other than add the tag) then otherwise leave it be. Once again, there is no need for me to check back - once 'tis done, 'tis done.</li>
</ul>

<p>$(*)$ There is one counter-argument to this that I consider quite strong based on my previous experience: when presented with a list of changes we expect the OP to make, lots of them just add the self-study tag and think they are now done! So perhaps if we added the self-study tag for them and then said "now check you comply with its conditions", it might prompt them to focus on the substance of our self-study guidelines rather than the superficial addition of the tag. If I change my mind about this issue in the future, this is probably going to be what tips my mental scales.</p>
