Sigh. When I deleted your previous thread I asked you to state your point clearly a meta post rather than wrapping it in snide rhetoric. I suppose this is as close as I'm going to get.

This subreddit is indeed 'editorialised' (well, just edited really). Why? Because it lives on an internet forum with millions of users, very few universal rules and content ranging from pictures of cats to in-depth discussions of the physics of electricity to pin-up girls (and that's just the front page). There's no barrier between subreddits, so keeping each one within its intended scope requires active moderation – I challenge you to find a single large subreddit that doesn't have rules about staying on topic. In this subreddit we have a very narrow and unusual scope: high quality, Q&A-format discussions about history. Maintaining that is hard. We need everyone who posts here to approach the conversation with with a certain seriousness and an academic mindset that might be easy to establish in a public lecture or the pages of a popular history magazine, but isn't on an internet forum largely concerned with funny pictures and weird anecdotes. That's why we have a lot of rules and moderate comments closely.

And honestly, why else do you think we'd do it? Do you really see the position of my fellow moderators and I as "on high"? What status and personal perks do you imagine we get out of tidying away off topic questions and low effort answers? We're not dictators. We're bureaucrats, doing a fairly mundane (I won't say thankless, because we actually do get lots of encouraging messages from our wonderful user base – the real perk of the job) volunteer job because we believe this subreddit is a worthwhile endeavour and, in more than a few cases, because we're given to procrastination. We read comments and check them against a set of clear, well publicised quality standards. If they don't measure up, we delete them. That's it. Those standards have been developed in constant consultation with the wider community, and it has voiced its support for our moderation policy repeatedly. In addition, none of the mods (except my synthetic colleague /u/AutoModerator) are appointees from outside the subreddit. We are all first and foremost subscribers to /r/AskHistorians, and we've all put in our time asking and answering questions – in some cases for years before being asked to help with moderating.

I'd prefer not to answer your questions about myself (not because I'm hiding, I'm just not that interesting) and I don't see how it's relevant to performing my bureaucratic role in this subreddit. A number of our moderators and flaired users have do maintain profiles on our wiki with information about themselves and their research interests though.

If you'd actually spent any time as an active member of this community at all, you'd know that the mods here only became mods in the first place after having first become widely recognized and respected members of that community. They've been here for years, in some cases, consistently engaging with readers, helping people with their inquiries, inspiring serious and fascinating debates, and generally participating in and shaping the community day after day.

None of the information you're demanding is hard to find. The mods, like many other users flaired and unflaired alike, talk about themselves, their interests, their frustrations, their hopes, their achievements, and a dozen other personal things on a near-daily basis. Check through the open Friday threads especially if you actually want to get a sense of who these people are. They make no secret of it. Many of them also have profile pages available, too, which you can check out at your leisure.

If that isn't enough for you, every single one of the mods now serving had an introductory meta-thread on the occasion of their induction to the team. These threads were opportunities for readers to express any objections they had, ask questions, or comment in any fashion they wished on these developments. You may find debate in some of these threads, but what you won't find is anyone asking "...who's that?"

In short, you're asking for this introduction because you're ignorant, not because the mods are mysterious or because this community is somehow in the dark. Don't project your own problems onto everyone else.

Great comments here by /u/HistoricalConscience and /u/brigantus. I will quickly add that the mods are volunteers who use their precious time in an effort to make this subreddit better and to keep its standard high. We owe them a great deal.

I have not always agreed with the calls of the mods, but I understand that their role is necessary for the health and well-being of this sub. One can regard their role as a necessary evil, but one cannot regard THEM as a necessary evil. They are performing a noble task by volunteering.

I do not know what your concern is with the mods, but you might benefit from stepping back and trying to look at the issues you perceive with a different perspective. This is an enormous community, and frustrations are inevitable, but the structure that keeps the quality high works in the final analysis.

Speaking purely for myself, I moderate this sub like the various upper division seminars I have attended and led. In these spaces, you are expected to discuss the subject matter at hand, the topic of the day. You are not allowed to abuse the precious time by filling it with only jokes and answers that are not based on your reading of the materials and do not help the discourse develop, or you will be failed or kicked out of the program. This is not censorship. Rather, this is recognizing the forum, recognizing appropriate decorum, and comporting ourselves in an manner fitting for the setting.