Hello everyone and welcome to the 18th installment of our continuing series of Rules Roundtables! This project is an effort to demystify the subreddit and also to gather your feedback to help improve it! We aren't just covering the hard and fast rules though, but also looking at other aspects of the subreddit and the community. This week, we're looking continuing our examination of the question asking process.

Our previous installments looked at our "No Stupid Question" approach, and then at how to better understand periodization and localization to help narrow down scope.

###Making Not Dumb Questions More Not Dumber

So far we've been looking at common pitfalls to questions, but now let's talk about how to avoid them, and how to make your questions really stand out! Asking good questions can often be harder than asking not dumb ones, but to return to Carl Sagan, a little self-criticism can go a long way.

To reiterate from the earlier installment, our rules are quite broad when it comes to how they are phrased, but if you ask most any flaired user on the subreddit, they will tell you that they get the most enjoyment out of answering questions where they feel that the Question Asker cares about the answer. Obviously people aren't coming to this subreddit because they don't want their question answered, but putting a bit of time and thought can greatly improve a question, both helping to make your question get noticed in the first place, as well as sound interesting to a potential respondent. While there is always an element of chance, both from experience and observation, these are a few things that we hope users will keep in mind when asking their questions!

###AskHistorians Helps Those Who Help Themselves

Before you ask your question, put some thought into it! Consider the pitfalls detailed before and use a bit of self-criticism to evaluate what you are asking and what you have written. Do just a couple minutes of research and see if you can build a fuller picture of what you're asking about. Think about how you are framing your question, and what lead you to ask it as you write out the title and the body. None of the following are rule requirements for the sub, but they are suggestions from the mod team based on years of seeing questions both succeed and fail:

####Premises

As we explored in the last installment, we don't usually remove falsely premised questions, nor questions which are seeking basic facts. But this doesn't mean you should necessarily settle for that! Rather than, say, asking "What is the oldest building in the world?", do some quick searches, and perhaps ask a question about Barnenez Mound in France or Knap of Howar in Scotland. It appeals more to the interest of respondents, and also helps them formulate a better response.

####Titles

The most important thing is the title of course! The best titles put forward a clear question that will tell a potential respondent not just what you want to know, but the period and place you are looking for (Who, What, When, Where). If you have multiple sub-questions, it is usually better throw those in the body of the post rather than fill the title to the character limit. A few examples of good titles:

During World War II, how successful were Japanese codebreakers at deciphering American communications?

What was the reasoning behind the Western Roman Empire’s decision to allow such massive German immigration?

How did Anthony Comstock become such a powerful figure that his name became a verb?

After opening their borders to foreign trade in 1633, why did Japan change course and close them again only a few years later?

And some less than stellar examples:

• "Tell me about Rome!"

*Even if the body text includes information to narrow it down and thus avoid breaking the "Example Seeking" Rule, the title doesn’t advertise what you are asking! The title should convey what you are asking about. Similar common mistakes such as "Is my friend wrong about this?", or one that gives a general sense of the topic without a specific question - "Status of women in Athens during the 'Golden Age'" - are also advised against.

• "In WWI how much leave home could a British soldier expect to get during the year, if any? Did it vary for officer v. enlisted? Did the point in the war matter? How many went AWOL when home? How were they treated by civilians generally?"

This is the opposite direction! A cluttered list of questions that should have been in the body, with only the first one being the title by itself!

• "did gengis khan realy knock up haf of asia"

While we are understanding of the fact English isn’t everyone’s first language, attempting to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation can make a big difference.

Remember, the title of the question is the first thing people see, so making it a good one is the most important step!

####Body

So you have an awesome title for your post, but you can still add some body text. It is by no means required to do so, especially if you have a nice clear title, but if you have any background information - Why you are interested in the question, what you have already learned about the topic, relevant image, etc. - or if you have subquestions to include, this is the place for them! To use one of the example titles, a good body text for the first question might be:

So I recently read about the Battle of Midway and how the US intelligence played such a key role in the fleet being ready to take on the Japanese. It got me wondering how successful the Japanese were in their own efforts. So a few questions on the matter I’d love to see answered!

• Were the Japanese able to break the American codes?

• If so, how aware were the Americans of this fact?

• Did they enjoy any success against other Allies powers in the Pacific, such as the UK or the Netherlands?

• Were there any notable successes in the war that could be attributed to their code breaking?

These all can help the person answering the question get a much better sense of what you are asking, and also, as noted before, they help demonstrate that you've put time and effort into crafting the question as well. Those are qualities that make a flair, or any respondent, more interested in answering a question! Answers which go beyond a simple recitation of facts, or make the writer think about their topic are the ones which warm a flair's cockles.

####Keywords

While this rehashes much of what we’ve already gone over, as some of you know, many of the flaired users on this site subscribe to an alert system that will tell them if a question has shown up in their field! It works by doing periodic searches for words or phrases that they have specified. So if you are asking about the Civil War, make sure that you have “Civil War” in the title or the body of the post. Again, as a rule of thumb, “Who, What, When, Where” should all be readily apparent to the reader and any potential respondent (unless of course one is totally not applicable). Use of common scopes for location and period, as explained here, can be very useful in this respect.

###Come Again?

OK Mr. Speedreader, to recap... We try our best not to police how people ask questions, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't put some thought into your questions anyways. Poorly thought out questions often don't get attention, or else don't lead to quality answers. Taking the time to think about a question before posting it can often do a lot of good, so always make sure to think about the “Who, What, When, Where” of your question.

Ever since the Colin Kaepernick controversy blew up, many people on twitter (yeah, I know) have been making this argument. This article, in particular, has been making the rounds. How much truth is there to this argument?

While listening to the 1st book of Robert Caro's LBJ biograph series on audiobook I opened LBJ wiki page and found claims that he had helped secure visas and done other work to help Jews escape Germany and resettle in Texas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Texas).

I haven't gotten that far in the book yet but this article(http://www.aish.com/ho/i/Operation-Texas-LBJs-Mysterious-Mission-to-Save-Jews.html) claims Caro didn't write about it and my impression was that Caro's biography's were supposed to contain just about every important incident in LBJ's life. Is there not enough proof this actually happened? Did it happen or was it just a rumour?