How in-depth should the analysis be, anyway?

As per the rules:

'Ask yourself these questions:

• Do I have the expertise needed to answer this question?

• Have I done research on this question?

• Can I cite my sources?

• Can I answer follow-up questions?

If you answer "Yes" to all of these questions, then proceed. If you answer "No" to one or more of these questions, seriously reconsider what you're posting.'

I suppose that ultimately, what defines the depth of an answer is subject to mod discretion, and that's a reality of being a part of this community. However, the above is the best guideline to getting a good idea of what "in-depth" is regarded as here.

Should an answer with good sources but without in-depth analysis be removed?

Ask yourself this:

What defines 'good sources'? Who defines them, the person that has written the answer, the community, the moderators? If an answer cannot - or refuses to - explore and analyze the sources they have provided, do you still trust their judgement in using them? Does it seem odd that someone can recommend a work to support their answer yet cannot explain why they have done so?

There's a lot more that goes into writing an answer - more that goes into engaging in historical study - than the ability to spout out memorized facts from a book. Anybody can do that. Any whack job can cite the names of authors and books that supports their angles. What analysis provides is a key context, and exploration, of the roots of sources and what they do to our constructions of the past. What good is a source if they aren't being analyzed?

Note that, technically, you don't have to source an answer, as per the rules. However, if you are challenged or asked to substantiate a claim or source, you are bound to do so. The failure to do so should be cause for a warning to the answerer, and possibly the removal of a comment.

Regardless of the quality of the source you are citing, an answer should not consist only (or primarily) of copy-pasted sections of text from that source. The intention in providing an answer in r/AskHistorians is to answer as a historian: making a statement of your own, while using sources to support that statement. --AskHistorians Rules

The primary purpose of the sub is to provide an environment where redditors can interact directly with historians who have expert-level knowledge on the material in question. To that end, the expectation is for answers to be comprehensive, responding in a manner consistent with someone who knows the subject well. Simply referring someone to other sources is not in the spirit of this sub, i.e. to better connect the public to experts (because frankly, the dialogue between those engaging academic scholarship and the general public is not always that great). Now in-depth and comprehensive does not automatically mean book-length, and I have in fact seen quite a few long responses that were well below the sub's standards, but a response should answer the question completely, and considering the complexity and difficulty of many questions here, that often requires a detail.

As /u/an_ironic_username noted, the value of historians does not lay in their ability to regurgitate facts and information on command; it requires a skill-set that has prepared them to interpret, scrutinize, and evaluate the sources at their disposal. This is crucial for primary sources, which can often be difficult to work with, but is necessary for secondary sources as well; the ability to evaluate another historian's argument is the difference between knowing which secondary sources (or parts of them) are reliable and reputable, and which parts aren't.

Now there is nothing wrong with providing a book or other secondary source recommendation (it happens quite frequently), but these kinds of responses are expected to offer a brief synopsis or analysis of the argument and how it fits into academic scholarship.

I'm sure this will be controversial. It's not about moderation though because I think the moderators of this subreddit do a fantastic job. Rather it's about the tendency, of which I'm as guilty as anyone else, to fethishise long 'in-depth' responses. That is, I've been thinking on the balance between providing an in-depth answer and providing an answer at all.

Let me illustrate with an example. Here's a recent post that I've been turning over in my head. I'm paraphrasing but the question was essentially "Why didn't Hitler pay more attention to Libya's oil reserves?". The answer, to boil it down, is that Libya at the time wasn't producing any oil. Which is the answer I gave. By any standard on his subreddit it's not a detailed or particularly good response, except one: it answers the OP's question.

So let me walk you through the process I followed here. The problem was that providing a proper in-depth answer would require following one of two approaches:

• Present a detailed history of the early Libyan oil industry, from the original Italian geological surveys to the emergence of a proper hydrocarbon industry in the 1950s. The only problem being that I don't know enough about the subject to provide such an in-depth overview.

• Approach from the perspective of the Italian war economy, a subject that I can talk about and which did inform my knowledge of Libya's lack of oil. But only a small paragraph of such a detailed post would actually address the OP's question. The rest runs the risk (judged high in this case) of being entirely superfluous.

Which is where I pause. I can't take the first option and am reluctant to spend 30+ mins crafting a reply that doesn't actually relate to the question at hand and will probably fall foul of any Libya-specific follow-up questions. So my options boil down to:

• Do I jot out a quick response that answers the question, in the hope that an expert in Italian exploration of Libyan oil reserves will follow along?

• Or, and here's where it gets tricky, do I not answer the question at all because I can't give a high-quality response even though I know the answer the OP is looking for?

In truth, I generally take the latter option. The questions are usually vague and the subjects mainstream enough that I figure someone will amble along and give a much more thorough analysis than I can provide. But with such an open/shut question like this? So I hesitated before replying and am still conflicted. (Which is, incidentally, why my answer itself is a bit of a mess. It answers the core question but I'm certainly not holding this up as an exemplar.)

Where my thinking has ended up though is that in cases like these the greater sin is ignoring somebody's question because you can't provide the perfect answer. We all enjoy cracking open our books and writing extensive in-depth responses but, for straightforward questions at least, ultimately some answer is better than no answer at all.

But I'd welcome people's thoughts on this. And if we do have a flaired user whose area of expertise is 'Libyan Oil Exploration, 1920-1960', please step forward. Your hour has come.

Should an answer with good sources but without in-depth analysis be removed?

Well, consider the reason why a user is posting here in /r/AskHistorians. If the user wanted to just get a good list of sources, they'll ask for a book list here, or go searching online. If they're asking a question, however, and it's not a source request, they're probably here asking us as historians what we think. If they just wanted us to dump sources, they'd ask for that. If they don't, then they're here asking us to give them an in-depth answer. Just dumping a whole bunch of sources without context or great analysis, as such, is not at all helpful. No matter how good the source is, that's not what the inquirer is looking for. If it were, they'd say so.

So unless the question is specifically a sources request, I would expect the mods to remove anything that's effectively just a source dump or a link dump. That's not helpful.

How in-depth should the analysis be, anyway?

Depends on what the question is and how generalized. If the question was something like "why did the Great Leap Forward cause so many deaths?", I give a rather large overview, and then I often go further in-depth with followup questions. If it's more specific, like "how was education impacted during the Cultural Revolution?", then I'll go more in-depth on that specific subject.

Edit: This does not mean that I don't actually go in-depth in my overviews. I try to be as detailed as possible, even if it's a general overview. Plus, you know, I'm supposed to know my shit and have sources and expertise and stuff. Otherwise, WHY THE FUCK AM I FLAIRED??? It's just that I can't write up every single thing that I want to write on said topic in an overview unless I want to be sitting in front of my computer for several days straight, and I hope you guys ask me follow up questions!

Are this subreddit's too strict in moderating top level posts?

*thinks about it* NAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Are the mods only 6% literally Hitler, or are they more than 6% literally Hitler?

They're 100% literally Lincoln, who is literally worse than Hitler. *nod*

I would like to clarify something here. Our rules don't prohibit the posting of a 'good source without an in-depth response'. But, we do require that if you are providing a source and not an answer, you include a small review of the source, and explain why you believe it to be relevant to the OP's question. Generally, when people just drop a link or a book title, they ignore this requirement.

Definitely only 6%.

But seriously I think the top level answers do not necessarily have to go in depth if they are well sourced. If that particular answer-er wants to go into detail they're welcome to but I think it's a bit harsh to expect that of answers when the moderating rules are already so strict. If anyone has a complaint with depth they can dive into the answer-ers sources for more info on the subject and the onus is on the inquirer to garner more information from these sources not on the answer-er to provide in-depth analysis. Does that even make sense? Whatever, I'm open to hear differing opinions.