I am of the point of view that before condemning a question as "too simple", "too easy", "homework", etc., one should be able to demonstrate its easiness by clarifying or solving it.

I am of the point of view that before condemning a question as "too simple", "too easy", "homework", etc., one should be able to demonstrate its easiness by clarifying or solving it.

No, because doing this makes it extremely irritating to close unclear questions.

Also, if a question seems like both homework and too easy, then answering it, even in a comment, is letting the bad guys win, so to speak. If a question is too easy but asked in good faith, then I'm alright with leaving an answer/comment, but it should still be seen as going out of your way for someone rather than something that you have to do.

I agree that there is no obligation to write out a solution for an obvious hw problem. However, for the problems I have seen that were obviously hw, I knew the solution immediately without thinking. I think that before voting to close something that you think is hw, you need to know a solution even if you don't write it down.

I think that this is clearly a homework problem. The most that we should do for the questioner is say "Think of the sphere of radius \sqrt{2} -- you might want to think about the Clifford torus too!" Spelling out the solution (as Scott does) doesn't help the student learn to think... My 2 cents.

It wasn't obvious to me that this was a homework problem, but perhaps my alarm bells aren't as finely tuned as others'. I've seen Frohman previously post rather obnoxious comments claiming that a problem was obviously homework, and on at least one of those occasions I didn't see any clear evidence, so I decided to ignore his input this time.

The question of how much detail is most helpful to students in the long term is rather thorny, and a typical internet discussion will generally reveal more about people's prejudices regarding human cognition than it will about what is known in the mathematical education research corpus. I usually rely on instincts, and here, they seemed to disagree with others'. In this case, to be honest, the person asking the question seemed sufficiently clueless that I didn't think my answer would have helped her or him complete the hypothetical homework problem in a satisfactory way without further input (say from peers or an instructor). I mostly spelled out some details for the benefit of those who were familiar with complex numbers but hadn't seen torus knots before. I don't think many students are exposed to the rich geometry arising from small neighborhoods of algebraic singularities.

I disagree with Harry's adversarial worldview (cf. "letting the bad guys win"), because I don't think this is a fight. However, I agree that encouraging responses to poorly thought-out questions may lead to lower signal-to-noise ratio in the future. Andy's rule seems like a pretty good way to judge, although I've slipped up in the past while using it.

For the people who want to close it, there are two courses of action at this juncture:

Option 1. Vote to close with the reason that it is "too vague". In which we enter the discussion of whether the question is vague enough to require closing.

Option 2. Vote to close with the reason that it is a homework problem. In which it should ideally fit the description given by Andy Putman:

However, for the problems I have seen that were obviously hw, I knew the solution immediately without thinking. I think that before voting to close something that you think is hw, you need to know a solution even if you don't write it down.

I myself would like to hear the solution even if it is homework, as I am not knowledgeable at all in knot theory and would be happy to learn something even if it is trivial.

@Scott C: My comment about "letting the bad guys win" was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek.