Just saw a topic deleted earlier today for breaching this rule. The problem with non-experts is that they don't always know enough to ask the right questions. An easy thing to forget when you are the one with the expertise, but why should the inquisitive be punished for their lack of knowledge? What is the purpose of this subreddit if not educating those willing to learn?
To be specific this question asked how generals were trained in the art of warfare in the ancient world. A relatively vague question but certainly one open to genuine insight from an expert. Not a question designed for a trolling purpose, nor a thinly veiled political opinion structured as a question.
Now here's the thing, we all know the question is too broad to give a single answer to. But that isn't reason enough for deletion. If the true answer is "training for generals wasn't standardized in a widespread way until the year ____ so it varied from region to region and often even from general to general" then why not just say so?
The idea behind this rule seems to be that vague questions get vague answers but that need not be the case, in fact in cases where it is it should be the vague answer being deleted not the broad question. There is absolutely nothing stopping someone providing the example question with an excellent answer. Nothing is stopping someone simply picking an ancient general and describing their training program with the usual preface of "obviously it wasn't the same for everyone" then bam, we have a detailed answer about the training of a particular ancient general and we've all learned something. As a bonus, because the question wasn't massively specific another expert in another time period can also chime in about another general he knows lots about and be completely relevant to the topic at hand without retreading the same ground as previous answers.
Remember, you have no obligation to make your answer as vague as the question itself. The ability to provide detailed information in response to a broad question is where the value of the expert lies. A good doctor doesn't respond to a question like "what should I avoid doing while pregnant?" with "there's a million possible answers to that, it's a bullshit question and I'm not answering it." they just tell you the specific things most likely to be related to your situation. They tell you to avoid smoking while pregnant and a dozen other things you'd likely do if you didn't know any better. They recognize you don't necessarily know enough to ask the right questions in the right way and they work around it and provide you useful information anyway.
I suggest we stop discouraging broad questions but continue encouraging specific answers to questions of all scopes.
I'm afraid the reason is a little more mercenary. These threads invariably turn into piles of crap, full of vague, speculative, and generally unworthy answers, and cause the mods a lot of work trying to filter out the one or two good answers that may be inspired. It's mostly the work level. While nothing is stopping someone going in-depth about a certain general, it's not really encouraging them to do so as much as a specific question does. So we're both trying to discourage bad answers and encourage good ones.
There's no punishment for posting a throughout-history question either. Our removal message for those asks you to resubmit with a little more specificity, or if it's really a very open question, suggest it for Tuesday Trivia. And you can always shop around, we're not the only history club on reddit - /r/History and /r/AskHistory are both fine for these questions.
Worst of all, imo, there are no suggestions on how to phrase the question "correctly" so as to get the information you're after. All this does is penalize certain posters.
Remember: The rules are not about punishing bad users, or about us going on an extended power trip, or about making this environment as "academic" and po-faced as possible. They're about curating an environment where good content can flourish, and part of that is encouraging behaviour that leads to good content while discouraging behaviour that leads to bad content.
The truth of it is, "throughout history" threads lead to bad content. They rarely generate the diversity of quality answers you're thinking of, and more often they generate threads that look like an /r/AskReddit thread. Those threads would often turn into comment graveyards, burdening the mod team disproportionately while still not providing the interesting content that they were supposed to.
In other words: What you want is a diverse panel of experts writing their perspectives on a broad subject as it relates to their areas of expertise. Unfortunately, if we changed the rules so that "throughout history" questions were allowed again, this is not what you would get. You would get comment graveyards with maybe one or two quality answers in them.
Yes, this does put some burden on the asker to ask a reasonable question that fits with what the subreddit is trying to do. There's no escaping that. And yes, we do have concerns that the subreddit is intimidating for the least knowledgeable users, which isn't our goal - but we have to balance being inviting to those users versus the actual outcomes of threads.
We find that even if someone doesn't feel knowledgeable enough to post a question, they still benefit from lurking. And that their experience, too, is improved by not having the sort of problematic threads that "throughout history" questions would lead to. And ultimately, reading quality content is more likely to lead them to ask good questions in itself.
Again, this rule is not punitive. We don't ban people for breaking it. Users are welcome to submit more specific questions, and we try to direct them to our rules and FAQ about it - maybe the interest in this rule is a sign that we need to do a better job of informing people about how to ask questions.
We're still looking at results from the last survey, which means that there may or may not be clarifications and possibly changes announced soon. But until then, I hope you understand better now why this policy is in place.
This ban should stay, your sweeping questions can be left to Google. AskHistorians isn't Google. There are a lot of people who put a lot of work into there answers and when they get back "not exactly what I was looking for" it gets very frustrating.
We usually ask people to elaborate or narrow it down if it sounds like its a simple case of poor wording, so, for example 'How did people travel in Ancient Rome?'; its a legitimate question but it covers a very broad period. So we then ask - what period do you have in mind, republic, empire, etc?
I've only seen mods react to the most blatant questions - 'WHO WAS THE BEST COMMANDER IN HISTORY' is something that's going to raise our eyebrows.
I have never seen a post where a responder has asked the OP to narrow it down be deleted for 'throughout history' reasons, I think it would be very unfair to the mods to accuse them of doing so.
I have a history library of my own, and I have access to the Internet. Most every specific question that I can come up with, I can also find the answer to relatively easily myself. It's a lot more difficult to find an answer to questions that might not be specific to a particular time or event. It strikes me as a wasted opportunity; to ban the one type of question that having access to a wide spectrum of experts is exactly what is called for, but is otherwise very difficult to research myself.
I tentatively agree with the suggested position. However, this change in policy would have to be added to the subs rules in the sidebar.
Just curious, but if someone asks a vague question, can't they be asked to clarify it or narrow it down before being deleted?
I hope people don't get offended if their post or comment gets deleted by the mods. It isn't like you are in a classroom with a smarmy teacher who shoots you down because they're in a bad mood that day. Submit your question and if the mod asks you to clarify or narrow down your topic, take your medicine and move on. If the poster really wants something answered, they should adhere to the mod's request and re-post it appropriately.
Don't be so sensitive Reddit.
Maybe you could have vague question Mondays [working title]? Hollistic Tuesdays? Pan-historic Thursdays? OP's post makes a number of very valid points and it seems a shame that even good questions that could apply to many periods get deleted off hand. To pick just one example, asking if there are exceptions to a historical trend can yield detailed and informed answers.
I'm an anthropologist. We often deal in massive time periods and questions about hollistic trends. We cannot always provide the answers, but we sometimes do. And these questions are not without merrit.
Throughout-History-Fridays might not work, but surely it's worth trying - you can see from the number of upvotes that this post has at least some support.
'Throughout history' questions allow any Historian to give their insight if they'd like; Not just someone who studied a specific time period. This would allow a range of answers from different sources. I really don't understand why the parameters for posting questions must be so specific, and why some topics seem to be avoided.
This sub is really turning into a hostile circlejerk. Half the time questions are responded to with a really wordy and pretentious phrasing of "it's complicated so I'll call it a bad question and act like you're stupid for asking it".
One time an OP said something along the lines of "obviously the ancient japanese were more sexist than the greeks". I questioned if that was accurate and was treated to a treatise of horse shit about how it's so complicated and covers so many areas and it's impossible to answer blah blah blah. What the fuck is so hard about picking a time period and comparing an overview of contemporaneous marriage/property rights etc between the two areas? Don't have the knowledge or expertise to do that? Then don't say anything, you are not the target of the question.
Edit: Basically I have to wonder why unintelligent non-historians are allowed to freely berate questioners to satisfy their own egos while contributing absolutely nothing to the dialogue. This sub has such high standards in so many areas, you'd think culling worthless responses that dont even attempt to answer the question would be a priority. If someone asks a question it's because they want a knowledgable answer. Not to hear some loser pipe in with anti-intellectual nonsense about how nothing can ever be compared to anything else. No answer at all would be vastly preferable.