My students and other instructors using WeBWorK constantly complain about the grades showing up as zero.
For reference: We are using Blackboard for calculating grade averages, including the grades that are synced from WeBWorK. Blackboard calls average calculation that omits
assignments that has no attempts "running total". You could set up homework assignment links one-by-one and that would do calculation the way you would like. Probably there are similar settings on other LMS platforms.
"running total" calculation bothers me,
because some students don't even look at the homework and I
have to manually zero out their grades if running total is set, or their average is not correct.
On the other hand if a student follows an assignment link in Blackboard and looks at it on WeBWorK without entering any answer, a zero grade will sync to Blackboard, which also results in complaints.