Another week, another e-mail from the sketchy-as-hell David Publishing Company about turning one of my recent conference papers into an article. It is very obviously a Chinese article-mill, but is trying hard not to seem like it is. The latest e-mail is from someone claiming to be called "Donna," based in California, and concludes with this sinister note:

"We have sent you a email about your paper several days ago, and pleased to pass on our regards to you. We hope to keep in touch by email and can publish some papers from you and your friends. As an American academic publishing group, we wish to become your friends if necessary."

If necessary :o

Exciting new feature! Once a month we will be presenting the latest crop of newly flaired users to you in this thread. We forget to do it last week, but here's the list for August. We gained nine experts last month. Here they are for your perusal.

For those who make high quality and long posts in AskHistorians: How you guys able to write such a long posts in such a short amount of time? Do you guys just have a saved copy to a particular answer, or is there any other wizardry involved?

I got assigned to my first TA class yesterday. Only thing is its a course on Ancient and Pre-Colonial Africa, while I am getting an MA in European, Russian and Eurasian Studies and have next to know knowledge of Africa at that time. Fortunately the prof is aware of this and said I will just have to help grade their essays at the end of the semester, and as its just lectures and no seminars, don't even have to show up to classes. However I felt that as I am getting paid to do this, and don't know anything about Africa, I might as well sit in on a free course on the subject. Still kind of confused why they would put me in this course though.

I'm currently checking/fixing footnotes and was wondering:

Why are American historians/citation guides (e.g. Chicago Style) so obsessed with citing publishing houses? It seems to be much less common in other countries and disciplines. Most historians should be able to judge the reputability of scholars without this information and beyond the academic presses, I wouldn't blindly trust a publisher anyway. What gives?

I don't know the drill, so if some of this has been addressed or if there's a better place to ask, please point the way.

A lot of questions in this sub don't get answered. Is this more likely to be because people don't deign to answer them (question is too broad, or the answer is simple/searchable), or simply because they were missed by those with the expertise to do so? When it comes to questions that haven't been answered, should we assume they lack merit and ignore them? I know this sub is heavily moderated - to what extent do you filter questions?

In accordance with the rules, I haven't attempted to provide any answers that I can't back up with sources, but I'm not a historian - I just happen to do a lot of research for personal and professional reasons. Is it better/preferred to allow time for a question to be answered by "a professional" first?

Edit: words

Does anyone know the origin of the phrase "No skin off my back?"

I was talking to my boyfriend about it and all I could find is that some people also say "No skin off my nose" and "No skin off my teeth" which I've honestly never heard...

Seeing the picture of the ticket on the front got me thinking about this, but I don't think it necessarily warrants a whole thread.

What was the reaction to The Beatles announcing they were going to stop touring/ they were breaking up? Considering the culture change they brought on, I can't imagine it just being "Oh well, no more Beatles."