I'm not a mod or a historian, nor do I know how many other people I speak for when I say this, but I think there is a common problem in the answers I see on this subreddit: it's what I refer to as the "general appeal to specificity." It's basically where the answer to a question is "well, it all depends. There are too many specifics to speak in generalities."
Now, it's an unavoidable fact that often there are a lot of specific details in history and that history often defies easily understood general patterns, but that could be a starting point to an answer. Leaving that as a whole answer strikes me as rather unhelpful. To avoid making a General Appeal to Specificity myself, I'll give one example of an exchange on this subreddit (no offense intended to anyone involved in this exchange, if any of them recognize it):
The Western European marriage model was largely driven by economic factors, not the source of those factors. Later marriage by peasants was predicated on the need for self-sufficiency by a new couple.
What economic factors applied outside of the Hajnal line that allowed peasants to be self-sufficient in spite of earlier marriage?
The model of serf/peasant functioned differently. It is not an apples to apples comparison, and the differences were wide, but varied depending on the locale. A peasant in China at this time lived under very different conditions than a peasant in North Africa than a peasant in France than a peasant in Mesopotamia.
In my opinion, saying "it all depended of circumstances and there was a lot of variation" isn't very useful without at least talking a little about how circumstances and variation manifested.
The problem is, of course, that very often it does very much depend.
If someone were to ask me how manual labourers in Ancient Greece lived I'd have to say that it depends if the question is as broad as that. Not that I particularly want to say that it depends but unless I do, I have to go over everything in a given field. That would make my answer broad to the point of uselessness.
Phrasing a question so as to get the best answer is as much an art as answering said question and I think historians, of all people, care about how you phrase a question as much as about how you answer it.
The goal of this kind of answers is not to be definitive, but rather to encourage the poster to make more explicit his or her question. Cases in point are “medieval” questions (“How X did Y in the Middle Ages?” — well, in which part of the 1000-years period called the Middle Ages?) or “average-person” questions. Then, there are two possibilities: either the poster actually has a specific idea, which he can develop (“by Middle Ages, I meant in the feudal society”) to help contributors answering; or he does not, and in this case, it is probable that he will need an introduction on the period anyway to make sense of a technical answer. Another thing to note is that “large questions” will tend to produce poorer answers, because historians (amateur or professional) rarely have an in-depth knowledge in more than a few areas and periods. I can deal with a question about peasantry in France (to use your example), but not Mesopotamia. So instead of giving a good answer on France + vague generalisations about Mesopotamia, without knowing what the poster actually wants, I would rather ask him.
I think it can be very difficult to answer questions the way they're phrased. Like a really biiiig question. "How did colonialism affect Place X?" Wow. Well...okay, let's see. How can I answer something so big without being reductive or wrong? I can't. I can ask the questioner to rephrase, or I can re-interpret the question to make it easier to handle. I want to be helpful, so I am going to try, but in the end my answer is probably going to be qualified out the wazoo.
I agree that it is sometimes possible to say something about "how circumstances and variation manifested," but sometimes the sheer quantity of variances makes that difficult.
An example would be someone who asked a question about how "bad" European colonialism was for indigenous African people. It's a question that has an answer. It's a reasonable question. But it's also huge. And I think any answer that wasn't heavily qualified, in this format, would be justifiably accused of being reductive and inaccurate.
No, it's not unhelpful to tell someone that they need to go back and rethink the phrasing of their question. /r/askhistorians is not your, or anyone else's', personal research army. The questioner is required to make some effort to attempt to manage their own learning as far as they can -encouraging specificity is a part of that. We are not here to spoon feed anyone, everyone here has a life, many are busy people, when we (and I think I speak for most) take time out to answer a question we appreciate it if that question has been asked with consideration and on the basis of some independent thought and study.
This is not /r/ELI5 or /r/askreddit, this is a quasi-academic sub and there are standards to be maintained. If people don't want to adhere to those standards they can try a less formal sub such as /r/history or /r/askhistory
I actually will go against the thread by agreeing with you somewhat. Personally, I think that a top level response should be made by only two people: either someone asking a follow up question, or somebody who can answer the question or a variation on it. If someone asks, say, what medieval peasants ate, you should only ask for a clarification if you can usefully answer that clarification, or can illuminate some tangential topic. So if you should only say that they ate different things in eighth century Germany than in thirteenth century Italy if you know what they ate in one of those examples.
Question coaching can be useful, but will really only be helpful if the person can answer a question produced by it.
Or at least this is my take.
Using an appeal to specificity isn't necessarily a problem, it's entirely possible the question is too broad to make any real sense out of and to give a proper answer to.
Making generalisations so broad and that effectively ignore specific circumstances and variations aren't actually particularly helpful, and in some cases might as well be wrong. Understanding where it is inappropriate to make broad generalisations, I feel, is an important part of proper analysis. What good is a 'general rule' if it isn't actually generally true.
The way I see it, part of asking questions here is not that you are looking for specific details within specific parameters; but rather that you just want to know something. Maybe that's a weird way to explain it, but I know when I read /r/askhistorians it's not because I'm looking specifically for how chinese rice-farmers in the 1520s spent their afternoons, but instead I want to read a historians take on what lower-class citizens (in this case agricultural workers) did in their spare-time; within that historians particular era of choice (though I might be looking for something slightly specific, like "dark ages" or some other broad and general period).
I'd hate for me to ask some question about, say, Ancient Greece - and some expert here on the early Minoan Civilization won't reply with his expertise because my question wasn't specific enough. This might just be me, but as a layman when I ask a general question for a large period like "Ancient Greece" or "Medieval Europe" it's sort of about fishing for knowledgable people to talk about what they know, because that's what is so interesting and great about this sub.
We don't always need 1 comment to completely answer the question and leave the rest of the thread pointless. Isn't it better if - when someone poses a general question - many experts within that general area can respond and contribute?