It used to be that second or third+ tier comments could be jokes, speculation, or completely off-topic, but that's not the case anymore.

And yet strangely, the subscriptions continue to climb rapidly, the number of comments are up, and the number of flairs/historians actually posting good content is up. It's more interesting than ever.

And yes, I know that there are subreddits for alternate history or looser discussions, but they don't attract the same caliber of knowledge or passion. My argument is that this subreddit should be more lenient, and I guess I'll see how popular or unpopular this opinion is.

In one breath you say that you love this subreddit because it has the largest concentration of knowledge and passion and then say that you want the one thing keeping that knowledge and passion and professionalism in place to be scaled back.

I don't mean to be rude, but have you considered why there are very, very few other subs that have the same concentration of knowledge or passion or well constructed and quality posts? Reddit is entirely centered around the idea of low quality and low effort content. One click meme's and little one liner comments are easier to digest than 3000 word essays on Women's Rights in the French Revolution or some shit like that. Why would you ever do the 3000 word essay when you can just post a fuhnnay maymay and get 3 or 4x as much recognition? I know you're talking about 3rd or 4th child comments but really, with Reddit, it's a slippery slope.

I for one don't want the mods to move an inch.

Things that were OK when the sub had 50,000 users are not practicable when the sub has 300,000 users. The emphasis is academics; there are other places for the other things.

In my view one problem with non-serious and off-topic replies is that they tend to get upvoted a lot. ("I chuckled, have an upvote.") This might get those replies to a higher position than other, on-topic replies.

Furthermore, any non-serious and off-topic replies to the highest-rated top-level response will push down (from view) any other on-topic top-level responses. I think that is undesirable.

Edit:

Case in point: at the moment my own joking Alamo reference on a response above is pushing down this on-topic reply. Oh the irony :)

I don't have anything worthwhile to add, I just want to reinforce my disagreement with your position by posting a comment. This subreddit has a clear purpose and vision that the majority of its users support and appreciate. You're free to disagree, but I think you are in a slim minority.

I know this will be down voted viciously, but I've had run in with the mods for the tone of a reply comment. My complaint is that the mods allow too many responses that have no citations. Users are simply regurgitating information they saw in a movie, or on a History Channel special, without investigating the veracity of the information. If the mods maintained a level of consistency regarding the citation of information, I would trust this subreddit much more. Additionally, while wikipedia is a great place to find sources on a subject, it's too susceptible to manipulation, and should have limited trust as a source.