I don't know if this is an idea that people would like, so I figured I'd ask a question and see what moderators/users think.
I love this sub, and I love going through it. However, when I want to read more about a specific region or area, I typically have a lot of trouble doing so; I'd have to research an event, instead of just a region. So, for example, if I wanted to research Middle Eastern history, I can't usually just search "Middle East" and learn about interactions people have asked, about; I have to search for specific countries, and hope that I find international histories as well as national histories when I do.
My suggestion is this: /r/relationships (yeah, it's nothing like this sub, just a format thing!) provides the option to assign flairs to your posts, and then organizes each post into the sub-sections based on the flairs. There's a tab for all posts, and then tabs if you want to read about a specific topic. If you don't assign a flair to it, it'll either be assigned for you or it'll just be left to go into the general section, as it is now. I was thinking; why not do the same here?
It doesn't have to be too specific or anything, just a basic tab structure that organizes things based on dates, or regions, or whatever mods/people think best. This would help people find answers by categorizing their questions into areas that are more easily found by experts, and would also help those who are just roaming the sub occasionally (like me) and want to learn more about entire regions/eras while finding source material to look at in those questions.
Thanks for reading!
tl;dr: Wondering if there's support for introducing tabs based on subject area/time/geographical regions (any or all).
We've explored this a couple of times actually. The discussion usually ends on "history is too interdisciplinary to be efficiently sorted."
Consider: we could possibly sort by something close to the flair categories, but the whole sub would probably be Euro Blue which is just depressing, and even sorting people into those categories for their flair subjects is very contentious. Consider most everyone in Art Pink, Archeo Black, or Military Olive could just as easily go into a geographical color, but don't. We also sometimes just shrug and ask people to pick a color in their flair apps.
Take this current top question on the sub: Was there a reason American adults stopped dressing so formally in public
Is this American Red or Arty Pink for the fashion?
And the third one:
Did European Monarchs ever personally visit their New World colonies? Euro Blue for the Monarchs? Red for the Americas? Or hey, what if an Aussie wants to chime in because that's a colony, Sky blue for Oceanics?
We'd have to do this debate for every question. -__-
And then invariably the mods get distracted by a string of joke comments that need deleted or something, until the next time the proposal comes up. :)
There are a few problems that I might see in this:
1). people whom don't read the rules will post in the wrong areas, we see people whom don't read the FAQ or rules, so you might see people just posting willy nilly.
2). It might divide readers; rather than having everything together, you might find people reading only a select tab and ignoring the rest. I have been drawn to something new that isn't Europe thanks to how everything is mixed together.
/r/askscience does a kind of tagging of posts like that. Obviously not a mod, but I dunno how useful it might be in this situation. I don't know how well the categories for flared users would fare for this as some questions may inter lap multiple categories. I'd still like to hear what some mods have to say about it though, could be interesting to see!