Hello everyone – another meta reminder, but I'll keep this one short, I promise.
We strongly encourage people to include sources in their answers that back up their claims and provide further reading. Although it's always been optional to cite your sources up front (and will remain so for the foreseeable future), it's great to see that the trend in the subreddit has been towards favouring well sourced answers.
However, I'd like to point out that in this subreddit when we say "source" we're using it in the academic sense of a text or other published material that supports what you're saying. If you're unclear on what that means, our resident librarian-mod /u/caffarelli has posted an short and sweet introduction to sources in history and academia.
We do not mean the reddit meme of providing a snippet of biographical information which (supposedly) establishes your authority to speak on the subject, e.g.:
Source: I'm a historian of Greek warfare.
or
Source: I've excavated at Thermopylae.
You may very well be a historian of Greek warfare who's excavated at Thermopylae, and that's a splendid reason to decide to answer a question about how many people fought there. By all means say so. But the purpose of citing a source is to provide a verifiable reason for us to believe that your answer is authoritative. Your credentials and experience aren't a source, and they don't achieve that, for the simple reason that this is an anonymous internet forum and we have no way of confirming that you're telling the truth. We're a trustworthy bunch – I think the vast majority of people here are who they say they are – but then there was one recent case where a troll did the rounds posting lengthy answers prefaced by claims to have a PhD in everything from Roman architecture to optometry. By providing sources that anyone can use to confirm what you say, we don't need to rely on trust alone.
In short, if you want to back up your claims in this subreddit (and you should!), please make sure that your "Source:" is an actual source that people can verify, and not just yourself.
Think about it as the flipside of why we would prefer you not preface an answer with "I am not a historian, but..."
If you're not a professional historian, but you can back up what you say with credible sources, great! Post away! The whole point of this subreddit is that anyone who has the knowledge, whether a tenured professor or an amateur with an interest who has just read a lot about a particular subject, can answer.
If you are a historian, you'll know that what matters when writing about a topic is not the piece of paper saying you've got a degree, but all the stuff you read that contributed to your knowledge. If you wouldn't put "Source: I am an archaeologist" at the end of a conference paper about something you found on a dig, don't do it on this subreddit.
Good moderating like this keeps this sub awesome.
So glad to see that this sub is moderated at this level.
ELI5 started out about as well as AskHistorians, but quickly became a cesspool of trolls and unfunny people who try to inject humor into everything.
I really have to thank the mods of this sub for all the hard work they do. Balancing a quality sub is no easy feat.
Thank you mods, for keeping this subreddit clean of things that attract flies!
Me. "My comment is the golden truth". City of Reddit: Publishing Comment House. 2014.
Remember comment with Citations are fun and good for everyone! With your comment as the intro, the person can follow your sources and learn more about the subjects we love to post about!
Thank you for maintaining the top quality of the subreddit.
Great work here.
I'm curious how far this extends. If I say something like "Henry Kissinger was the Secretary of State," would that require a source?
I can only speak for myself on this, but comments that lack sources provide a headache not just for the mods and maybe the OP, but also for myself. If I get a message about a question that pops up on the feed regarding my area, I check it out no matter where I am (work, home, gym, etc.) The first thing I do is check the comments section to see what's already been posted. Within the past few months, I've noticed a lot of comments that fall within a few of the following categories:
Vague responses that begin with "well I remember taking a class on this once..." or "I think I saw somewhere that..." etc.
Comments that are flat out wrong.
Comments that post a link to Wikipedia, Slate, or some other common website. Not only is this against the rules, it's sloppy and disrespectful to the OP (my rule of thumb is: assume they are intelligent enough that they first tried to find the answer using Google; I realize that for some OP's, this might be a rather unrealistic assumption...) On another note, imagine a situation in which you asked a professional (Doctor, financial advisor, lawyer, etc.) for their opinion, and they gave you a web address instead of an answer. If you don't have the time or energy to write a response, don't do it. If it's causing you absolute turmoil that you haven't answered OP's question with a relevant link to Wikipedia, then PM them.
If I see any number of these comments, then my answer has become more complicated. Now, instead of only having to answer the question, I have to somehow correct the misconceptions from the previous comments. You can imagine that if 2-3 people post wrong answers, it gets incredibly aggravating. If 5 people post wrong answers, it's just not worth the time and the effort to post a response, then have to deal with the people PM'ing me and cussing me out for saying they're wrong.
This probably wouldn't be an issue if everyone read the rules, especially if you like the subreddit and want it to continue to be such a vibrant and enjoyable community. Also, for the love of everything, use the search bar if you have a question. There's a good chance that it has been asked before.
What if you do have verification, like a graduation certificate or... Eh, I don't know what else, I obviously don't fall in this category but I'm just asking out of curiosity.
Is there anyone who checks the sources in a post? Is there a possibility of someone writing a wall of text of bullshit, cite a few random sources that don't support him and getting away with it?
Out of curiosity, if a redditor who was generally known on reddit to be an academic who excavated at wherever is relevant, would that be a source?
Or where does the act of research turn into a usable source?
Can you cite something you have written and published?
It seems odd to me that anyone that actually carries a degree in history wouldn't think it proper to put a verifiable source in the first place. As if you can get through school writing papers without citations? I think not!
So that in itself makes me suspicious of anyone who says they have a degree but gets pissy if they have to verify it.
I love this - I'm an academic librarian and I've seen all sorts of "sources" passed off in college-level work. This sub can act as a reminder to the budding history scholar that credibility and citation are not just important, but get upvotes!
The only exception being of course if you have had a piece of academia published
I'm not a historian but I love the way you guys mod this sub. Keep up the good work.
The irony is that anyone citing their credentials as a source, is undermining the credibility of those credentials: no self respecting individual would expect others to "take my [anonymous] word" for a fact as it kills the exploration process.
Sources get us to new and useful information beyond their derivative summary.
What if I live through an atrocity, then sixty years later I recount that atrocity. Is that a source of said atrocity?
The confusing part of this for me is it's technically ok to not have a source at all, but it's not ok to mention your credentials?
Similarly, quoting any article from wikipedia as a source is bad practice. If you have found information on wikipedia, find the original source at the bottom of the page and reference that, not a sentence or paragraph that is not cited in wikipedia. End rant.
Can I ask a question that I had been meaning to regarding this topic?
I completely understand what you're saying today, but then when I look at the things historians source -especially more the farther in the past you go- they are giving more authority to first hand accounts of so-called historians who were alive during the time of the events in question.
If this is indeed a fair observation (it might not be) how is someone who is alive today and recording history a less reliable source than someone who did it 2000 years ago?
Should we follow a specific style guide when citing sources? Chicago Style?
I'm not a historian. But occasionally a hobby makes me versed enough to answer a question until a historian comes along. So I have a point of order while this subject is up.
Are we allowed to say that we can't source or cite a particular fact, as part of a post we have otherwise well sourced? For example, "I seem to recall ... , but I cannot find a source for this at the moment." In short - is it alright to mention parts of an answer that we are less than 100% sure on?
I know this is going to get downvoted into the ground but I'm willing to take the risk.
I feel like the emphasis needs to be on providing sources if information is contested in its validity. If we start on the basis that every statement or idea needs a book behind it then what's the point of this sub? Aren't we then basically just a really slow search engine for historical book recommendations? If all we're doing is paraphrasing a couple of paragraphs from a book and sending it on, it seems like a massive "why bother" to have this sub at all.
/r/AskHistorians has a reputation for some of the strictest posting standards outside of /r/Pyongang and I think that's good but it needs to come in the comment section, not pre-filtered based on if you have a book to support a point that most anyone with a passing familiarity with a subject can agree on.
Tightening things down even further will, IMHO, basically create an extremely narrow list of people (highly qualified though they may be) who can answer questions and everyone else has basically nothing they can contribute. I think this will encourage a kind of harsh technocratic environment and a mess of arguments over what is and is not a legitimate source; "Source: Alfred K. Douchemayer, 2009" "Tuh! Everybody knows Douchemayer is a bad source for Mayan penis enlargement techniques, he is clearly biased on the subject!"
I kind of feel like we're moving in the wrong direction.
What about justification for things - say, someone asks "Why would the Germans lose if they landed on Britain during World War II" and you gave a number of reasons(Logistical nightmares, Royal Navy etc.) but didn't source it(Because it's "self-evident").
Just one just assume that every assertion must be sourced or are there some times you don't need to source it simply because it makes good sense?
Thank you! Part of the reason why this place is better then /r/explainlikeimfive or /r/askreddit, is becuase people have sources, instead of "Well, I'm not American, or an expert in this field, but..."
This comment doesn't apply to me, but if a redditor had submitted a paper to a journal or had written a book on the subject would they be able to cite the work that they had created? This seems similar to (though I will admit more verifiable than) "source: I have a PHD in field XYZ"
Following up to this I have a small question: How about mentioning Wikipedia as your source?
Mainly in the less popular threads the top comments often contain wikipedia as it primary source and sometimes even quotations from Wikipedia. It is a great site but I thought that it was agreed that it isn't a valid source on this subreddit.
How can I source one of the things I've written without giving me away? Can I message someone privately and say "please pinky swear not to tell" or should I just find a similar source that may not be exactly the same? I've worked hard to preserve anonymity and for that reason I rarely comment, but sometimes it's nice to throw in a helpful tidbit.
I shall start asking for sources.
Can I cite my own book?
Do people/websites have to cite reddit content? I wasn't sure where to ask this, but it seems really lame that links like this just use stuff off of reddit and don't cite it at all.
ಠ╭╮ಠ ...yet.
This sub most of the time get's it to far. I know a lot thing from my country history that are not studied yet... I can't give the people I heard has sources... I'm not speaking about stuff from 220 years ago but about things whose archives are just now being open to the public.
People don't need to be dead to be part of History... <_<
I agree with this, but I think there might be room for an exception in the rare case when the poster actually witnessed something as it occurred in history.
For example, if there was a question about whether X happened in the first Gulf War or the Vietnam War, personal knowledge by someone who was there to witness X is much better evidence than the multiple hearsay found in academic sources.
Now, the flip side of this is that anyone can come on swear they were in the government and say aliens are real and we have them locked up at Area 51. So maybe there would have to some verification system for personal knowledge posts.
Just my two cents.