<p>One thing that comes to mind is that this site doesn't really provide "full service" consulting - we answer conceptual questions, and leave it to the poster to do the more time consuming work (e.g. implementation, writing up the results, making it all into a coherent story for a manuscript). If we were full service consultants, and commanding a large hourly rate, we'd likely be doing all of that work as well, which makes it sort of fundamentally different in my opinion. </p>

<p>Saying that we provide free tutoring reflects a pretty broad definition of tutoring - many of the homework questions presented here are ones many of us can answer at a glance, so simply asking leading questions (which is generally how homework is approached) requires very little effort on our part, and, in my opinion is not close to as involved as actually tutoring someone. In the case where the poster doesn't have the background to understand the leading questions, the question sort of "dies" - if we were tutoring, that would be the time where we'd have to step back and review more basic concepts. </p>
