It is good that it exists. But I think it also proves why we do a lot of what we do here.

Much of our "arbitrary moderation practices" are a necessity based on our scale. Both pages have been around since Fall 2011. AH has accepted 25 questions in the past three hours. SE received just as many total over the past four days. A few of those questions were voted to be closed since they're not history related. If you spend any amount of time on the "New" tab here, you will see just how many questions are asked that blatantly break our rules. We have 100 times more subscribers than the StackExchange has questions ever asked, and we are hosted on a site that allows simply curious people to end up here. You generally don't "end up" at StackExchange- you have a question in mind so you're looking for some place to as it. Reddit is for pictures of cats and video game review and local news and meeting people and laughing at stupid arguments- but also for ask pages like this. Our audience is not only much bigger, but much more diverse.

We also represent a different service than that of StackExchange, seeking to maintain a much more academic atmosphere. This is not /r/AskHistory, this is /r/AskHistorians. People don't just come here for answers on history, but for answers from historians. In this subreddit, we judge quality by authority and experience, not by democracy. It makes some people uncomfortable, but my comment verifying a response on archaeology is worth more than 50 upvotes from people who saw Time Team once. StackExchange, does attract "some" qualified discussion, but so many of the threads are messes and difficult to find the best answer. There's many copy and pastes from Wikipedia, unnecessary "This is an interesting question!" comments, and "answers" that begin with "I'd imagine..." One intersting answer just directs the asker to this book whose author also rights about "How the Fall of Atlantis Changed Our Reality" and "the 55-foot-diameter energy field of the human lightbody." When people complain about the grave fields of deleted comments, these are the things they aren't seeing. Sure, upvotes can sort some of that junk out, but not always.