If so, why did you refuse ?
And if you weren't proposed yet, would you accept to become a default subreddit ?
I saw that /r/history became a default... and it led me to discover that /r/history was actually pretty far from being "serious". I don't think I ever saw one serious thread with people who seemed to know what they were talking about.
And in fact, even in /r/badhistory, subreddit specialized in debunking historical misconceptions on reddit, there actually is a lot of bad history, even from flaired user.
So it led me to wonder why /r/askhistorians, unparalleled subreddit when it comes to quality of discussion and moderation, probably one of the only, if not the only, place on internet where you can have such quality discussion about history, wasn't a default subreddit yet.
My only real guess is the fear that getting too much new users would mean a downgrade in quality, but I think /r/askscience, default subreddit, still make a pretty good job.
I don't think any of the mods ever made an official mod-reply in the other thread, so here's my name in green.
Yes, the admins were kind enough to offer us default status in the last round, and yes, we did decline. The quality you so nicely appreciate in your post comes from a tight moderation style that is unfortunately not really scale-able, and we need to ensure an even, moderate growth pattern in the sub to keep doing it. It takes about a ratio of 1 mod to every 10,000 subscribers to keep up, and with a growth rate of 5,000 subscribers a day we'd need to add a new mod every 2 days! We also believe a self-selected group of readers/posters (by choosing to subscribe here and not being dumped in automatically) helps best build the community as a group of people truly interested in serious discussion about history. Consider not everyone who comes to reddit may be interested in history at all!
I hope this answers your question. Thanks for the compliments! :)
Yes. See this earlier thread for some discussion on it. The basic idea is that making this sub default would probably destroy it.