I think there a few problems with the argument you're trying to make.

Firstly, in your first paragraph you state that you liked this sub more before the rule change. You also state that this rule change occured right when the sub really started to grow. It may be that you just liked the sub when it was smaller. It may also be that what was manageable when the sub was smaller (vague questions) no longer is manageable now the sub is larger. Nothing in your argument indicates you have considered these possibilities.

Secondly, you state that "people who can make a truly high quality multiple paragraph properly sourced post that's interesting" have more chance to respond to vague questions, since they can decide to answer how they want to. That may be so, but again there's the other side of the coin to consider. Perhaps the person asking the vague question isn't interested at all in my speciality; in that case I'm writing a truly high quality multiple paragraph properly sourced post that I think is interesting and no one will care. It might end up being a huge waste of time for everyone involved. If someone asks a specific question though, I can go all out and spend lots of time and effort knowing it will be appreciated. And in cases where there is a specific question and I can go only give a slightly related answer, I can always decide to do that. Just last week I explained how Atlantis is a myth without answering any of the questions asked. As long as an answer is high quality and not totally unrelated, it will be allowed to stand.

Thirdly, you claim that the frequency of high quality comments has gone down. It's a shame that you haven't specified "high quality", nor have you shown any stats. Apparently you have the idea that this actually is happening, I appreciate that. Myself though, I'd like to see something more than just an unsupported claim. I went through the AskHistorians comments and found these multi-paragraph answers posted in the last few hours:

• In Les Mis, Victor Hugo claims that Napoleon would have won Waterloo if it hadn't rained before the battle. How true is this?
• What factors lead to The Beatles pursuing Indian influence in their later years? How did this contribute to the emerging youth culture in England (and America)?
• Did women in Ancient Rome really not have their own names?
• What factors lead to The Beatles pursuing Indian influence in their later years? How did this contribute to the emerging youth culture in England (and America)?
• I've heard the Space Race was more about demonstrating ICBM technology than actual exploration and scientific advancement. How true is this?
• Are there any historical evidence to prove the idea that ancient Egyptians or at least the cult of Amun originated from the Vedic culture of ancient India?

Note that this is during the slowest time of the day. What is wrong with these answers? Just that you'd like to see sources mentioned in all of them?

Now your final point "even a really poor, vague, uninformed question can lead to an excellent commenter dispelling misconceptions or enlightening us" is actually something which has been discussed among flairs. And many of us agree with you. These questions are not forbidden though, so your point is moot. It's specific sub-types of questions (throughout history, poll-type) which are forbidden, because the mods have noticed they attract tons of low quality reponses - not the kind of high quality answers you're looking for.

In short, you may have an idealised view of how the sub used to be (you liked it when it was smaller) and you may have an idealised view of the type of comments which come to questions which are currently forbidden.

/u/Polybios has addressed a lot of what I would have said.

I'll say this much; I do miss poll-type questions a bit. They attracted a lot of interest to the sub and were typically fun to read when they got lots of good responses, but I can appreciate that:

• They didn't always (or even frequently) do that
• They were a nightmare for the already-overworked mod team to babysit, and:
• Reddit's voting system tends to obscure what the best or most historically accurate answer might be anyway.

None of that's good for the sub in the long term, so as much as I miss the polls of old, the ban is a rational response to that.

I did want to address this as it hasn't really come up in the previous responses:

I believe this to be because most people who can make a truly high quality multiple paragraph properly sourced post that's interesting can only do so if they have a true passion for the subject.

One thing to keep in mind is that the lengthy, high-quality answers you applaud usually require a lot of work -- as in, hours before you finish writing, formatting, and fact-checking it. The availability of these answers ebbs and flows with the availability of the people who can write them, and I don't think anything's going to change that. The only way to improve the odds of getting a high-quality answer to any given question is to attract more flaired and Quality Contributor users who can answer it. Increasing this population is much harder than simply increasing the population of readers. (Although I hope most readers see that a flair is within reach if they have good command of a subject, or -- pie in the sky -- they get interested enough in history to pick up a few books on a subject they're curious about. Emerging flairs!) But in the end, whatever response a question is going to get depends on the time it goes up, whoever sees it, and only then, whoever has the time to answer it. Sometimes really good questions don't get answered and I always feel bad when I see that.

I've sometimes wondered if we could recruit on professor/grad student fora or whatever. Honestly, the best way to learn anything cold is to teach it to other people (/r/AskHistorians has made it way easier for me to rattle off North Korea facts and figures), and that's great for anyone mastering a subject. I think we also might need a weekly or monthly "Flair Drive" to pick up new flairs and/or make the criteria for Quality Contributor more widely known. I know we have specialized posts for this, but if it's not on the front page constantly it feels like it's easy for people to fall through the cracks.

Other random thoughts:

Reddit's voting system also works against us here somewhat, because new submissions are valued more than their older counterparts. It may take hours to write a really good answer, or even longer if you just have it up in a tab while you're working on something else and you're adding to it when you can. In that time, it's not uncommon for a question to drop to page 2 or 3, which significantly decreases the number of people who will see it. In a perfect world, we wouldn't care about this, but I think on some level that most people do and for very understandable reasons. Spending hours of your time on an answer that only a few people are going to see isn't a great feeling. This is something that's come up on /r/TheoryofReddit a lot; the site's voting algorithms actually incentivize against spending a lot of time on an answer. /r/AskHistorians avoids this as much as it can, but it can't change the math behind the site as a whole.

Even apart from the eyeball issue, time is always a factor. Very occasionally I see a question I might be able to answer, weigh the amount of time it will take me to answer it, look at other stuff I have to get done, and reluctantly bypass it. Again, not a good feeling. And short of turning /r/AskHistorians into a full-time job for lots of people, it's an unavoidable issue.

And of course sometimes you just don't see a question and "ignore" it because you're not aware it exists.

You're right that how people ask a question can have a significant effect on the type and quality of answers it attracts. What actually worries me most about the requirement that people ask more specific questions is that it does limit the supply of people who can provide a good answer. As an example, I often stay away from Korean War questions because it's really not my focus. I know enough about it to answer a few general questions, and that's mostly in relation to its effect on North Korean society, but I don't have anywhere near the depth to provide a really quality answer on it yet.

I'll put it this way. This is a question I can answer:

• "Did Kim il-Sung get any support from the Soviets during the Korean War?"

If I have the time to answer this, I will never skip it. I will certainly mention the MiG-15 and provision of experienced Soviet pilots.

But this question I can't answer to the subreddit's standards (unless I take a few days off to round up a bunch of books, read them, and have 12+ browser tabs open while answering it):

• "Were the MiG-15s supplied by the Soviets during the Korean War better than Western fighters?"

This is a great question, but there's a limited supply of people who can answer it. Ideally, you'd want someone well-versed in the military history of the mid-20th century, familiar with both Soviet and Western fighter development, familiar with the Korean War, familiar with what other planes were in the theater and where the MiG-15 stood in relation to them, and able to qualify what would or wouldn't make the MiG-15 "better" than, say, the F-86, and knowledgeable about Western nations did in response.

This person or people would be able to supply an outstanding answer if they see the question and if they have the time to answer it ... but again, we're already starting from a very small population that can provide an answer at all.

While I wouldn't agree with every sentiment above I would like to say that I couldn't even count the number of times I've thought of asking a question in this forum and decided against it because I didn't think I could be specific enough. I doubt I'm the only one. I'd be quite confident that this stifles content.

Care to provide some examples (perhaps hyperlinked in your post) which illustrate this transformation?

What you should realise is that it is very laborious to have to break down misconceptions which are (from anecdotal experience) very particular to the individual - when time is tight I usually weigh up how much I'm going to have to explain then typically say dos it and don't write anything at all. When the chronological scope is opened up your answer might simply be ignored because a poster was more interested in the Early Modern or Ancient rather than medieval.

There are lots of factors affecting (and incentivising) the production of longer posts. Your issue is one which makes me able to participate, as I lack the time or discipline to run through massive contextualisation in every post but can snap off quick factually sound but historiographically nuanced answers.

I do agree that best practice should include sources - even so people can simply follow up if they want to know more.

I personally enjoy the very specific questions, and I absolutely enjoy the fact people who have clearly made zero effort to google their question (if the rebuttal already appears on snopes it is probably a bad question) get the boot.

With that in mind though, I think something like a regular 'Tell Me Something About X Weekend' or similar could allow people with untapped knowledge to share what they know without being restricted by too narrow a scope.

• Tell Me Something About the adoption of gunpowder in various cultures.
• Tell Me Something About interstate royal marriages.
• Tell Me Something About field medicine through the ages
• Tell Me Something About advances in metallurgy and their effects.
• Tell Me Something About language barriers in diplomacy.
• Tell Me Something About Naval warfare.
• Tell Me Something About cartography.
• Tell Me Something About religious migration.
• Tell Me Something About pre-modern education.
• Tell Me Something About pre-internet computers.

Broad enough that people with widely varying chronological or geographical areas of expertise can participate, still specific enough that each answer can be looked at within the contexts of the other answers, and allows the normal standards to be maintained for normal questions (TMSAs would be a submit idea to mods thing).

When you ask an extremely specific question someone may have knowledge of the answer but it's just a minor part of their area of expertise and you don't elicit their passion for history; their answer will be short, bland, to the point, and often unsourced.

I find this to be counterfactual to my experience. If someone asks a broad question, I:

A) Can't assume that they are as interested in the topic

B) Have nothing to work off of and must guess what kind of answer they want

My best answers have all come from very specific questions: "Could Maya who didn't Ch'olan read Mayan hieroglyphs?" "Why do we learn about Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns in school?" "What was the role of skulls in Mesoamerican art?" "Did Latin writers ever actually use the word decimate to mean destroy a tenth of?" These are the questions that I can't just spout off answers for from the top of my head. I have to think about them, dig out an old article or two, find some good images or texts online, and consider the best way to describe things to layfolk. Just like any conversation, both parties need to show interest and contribute. If you ask "What was life like in time and place X?" and can't specify anything further than "idk just whatever you know or is interesting," you haven't brought anything to the table. I could write you 10 pages on one kind of this cultures ceramics and how they used them. I do not want to tough, because you don't seem like you'll get anything from it. Even just narrowing it down to "What did they eat and wear?" is so so so so many times better.

This interestingly coincides with a discussion among flaired users on answering uniformed questions, so I'll restate some of what I've said there. I will always provide some answer to your question. If it's vague/wrong enough, it's my policy to provide/correct basic info and encourage/prompt follow-up questions. People who ask vague questions practically never are the ones willing to engage with a follow-up. Only when they do do I find myself crafting good comments. Askers don't need to be historians, or even, informed, they just need to be interested. People who didn't bother to look up "Inca" on Wikipedia before they asked and do not respond when directly prompted for a follow-up question are not interested.

Are you referring to the ban on poll-type questions like "Who is the best military general in history?" or "What is the most interesting little-known event in your area of study?" If so, I most definitely agree with the moderators that those types of questions don't really have a place in this sub-reddit. The moderators are correct in saying that those types of questions normally lead only to trivia and don't provide much in the way of substantive analysis. But perhaps even worse, from what I remember of those threads, is that they actually stifled discussion. Yes, some responses may have been very detailed (although not necessarily analytically in-depth), but the problem was that the broad nature of the question led respondents to talk about only their own specific interests at the expense of back-and-forth debate or discussion about a specific topic. Poll-type questions consequently came off as a slew of individual, unrelated comments rather than a coherent back-and-forth discussion or debate with decent analysis.

I also don't think that broad questions necessarily imply a greater chance for more in-depth answers. Take, for instance, the current top question, which asks if JFK was a good president. That's certainly a broad question, and one that many people would be able to answer. Historians of civil rights, U.S. foreign relations, U.S. politics, the Cold War, Latin America, and more would have plenty that they could write about in that thread. Yet, the top comment (currently around 1500 upvotes) doesn't really say anything at all about any of those subjects. With the exception of only a couple of responses in that thread, there really are no in-depth responses to a question that I imagine many people would be able to respond to. Thus, I'm not too sure that allowing for broader questions will lead to stronger answers; in fact, it might very well promote the thing that you are saying is a problem with this sub-reddit right now--namely, superficial comments.

Personally, I haven't witnessed this dip in the quality of comments that you've brought up. In a sub-reddit of this size it's inevitable that some threads just won't garner good comments, and there will certainly be many questions that are so specific that they won't get a response. If there is a problem with the questions being asked, I don't think it's a problem that stems from the ban on poll-type questions, but from the lack of variety in topics most questioners bring up. I know personally it's very rare to see questions that I feel I can substantively respond to, and I've seen several other flaired users mention the same thing.

Sidenote: After typing those last couple of sentences, I'm wondering if that's perhaps what you are referring to as the problem with the sub-reddit's questions. If that's the case, then I don't think the issue stems from the rules here, but from those asking the questions. Unfortunately, we can't tell people what historical topics they should be interested in (which, of course, should be terrorism and U.S. foreign relations). Before I type anymore, perhaps you could explain what types of questions you wished could be asked that questioners aren't currently allowed to ask? Are you wishing that there were broader questions, or a greater variety historical topics that questioners would bring up?

Just as a quick note along with the other discussion: here's this idea that every question deserves or warrants a massive 3 post megaresponse treatment. That's just not the case. I think, to be frank, everyone tends to think or their question as wonderful when often a question can be answered in a single paragraph.

The issue with super strict posting rules ignores that reality.

I really dislike questions phrased as "I'm a Wermacht soldier in WW2, did I commit war crimes?" as opposed to "Did WW2 Wermacht soldiers commit war crimes?"

The "I'm a...." trope absolutely reeks of the reddit-ism / meme style shit posting that is plaguing the rest of this website and I really hate to see it infecting this sub; it's becoming a significant detraction to my enjoyment of AskHistorians.

This sub is consistently the best moderated and most informative sub in all of reddit. It is frequently held up as an example that other subs should follow. It is hugely popular and those who answer questions are held in high regard by both the readers of the sub, as well as other commenters. There doesn't appear to be a problem with /AskHistorians. I think you should consider that the problems you have with the sub are personal, and are not representative of the clear majority of other readers.

Ages ago /r/askhistorians made a rule against vague questions that don't specify a very specific time/place/situation.

You're conflating "questions that are broad and non-specific" with "open-ended questions", which is frustrating (and somewhat disingenuous, since you're getting responses agreeing that we shouldn't ask "what exactly do you mean?" when that's not apparently what you intended). I see a lot of questions that are just on the legal side of "throughout history" - there's nothing at all stopping you from asking a question about the entire Middle Ages or what have you.

When you ask an extremely specific question someone may have knowledge of the answer but it's just a minor part of their area of expertise and you don't elicit their passion for history; their answer will be short, bland, to the point, and often unsourced.

I 100% disagree. When someone asks a question about, say, English vs. French fashion in the early 1500s, my passion kicks right in. It doesn't matter that my main area of expertise is technically a few centuries later - I'm here to talk about the history of fashion, and I'm happy to do it even if I can't write it directly off the top of my head. (I mean, in this case I was pretty much able to because I went through a serious Tudor phase before grad school. But other times I have to stretch myself.) Very few people here, if any, can only answer highly specific questions.

You said in a later comment that we should want to answer poll questions because it's our hobby and that will give us an outlet to explore it. But the thing is, I'm here because I want to help people out and answer questions. If I just wanted to write about something I'm interested in, I'd do it on my blog or Tumblr.

It's one thing if you prefer asking poll questions or reading the answers, but it's very weird, frankly, to insist that all the people saying they don't like to answer them should like them because "they're good for you".

I kind of sympathize with both positions. I really liked answers to "in your area" questions, but I also see the problems with vague questions.

In my opinion, the vagueness rules for questions have had one deleterious effect on the answers: These rules seem to encourage people to give non-answers criticizing a legitimate question.

For example, I recall some months ago when a poster asked whether any Roman technology was truly lost during the transition to the Middle Ages. A flaired poster responded saying he'd be happy to answer--if the OP would only list specific technologies, a specific narrow time period, and specific region. This was well-upvoted, and no answer was ever provided, even after some effort by various posters to narrow things down. This sort of thing is not uncommon--answers that boil down to "you need to study history before you can be allowed to ask questions about history here".

What I think would improve on this issue--and I acknowledge that I'm unfairly asking the moderators to flat out do more--would be to forbid criticism of the questions unless an effort to construct an answer is included. Only allow moderators (not flairs) to critique a question directly, with users required to message the moderators if they have an issue with the question.

Again, this would place work on the shoulders of the mods, but I really feel that it would improve the discourse of the sub. Non-answers clutter up threads, discourage others from providing substantive answers, and generally give a vibe of aloofness to a sub that should be about accessibility.

To latch on, I don't think there's any problem with "asked and answered" scenarios because scholarship changes and people change; you don't always have the same people seeing the same questions so you can get some fresh perspectives from people who know or provoking questions from people who weren't around. It's a chance to continue the discussion.

I always get the impression that it's an "asked and answered!" annoyance when something is a repeat. As if the prevailing assumption is that anyone here asking a question was too stupid to use search beforehand as opposed to maybe just wanting a fresh take on the matter.

I've thought of questions or discussions I've wanted to post here and haven't simply because I feel like in doing so it's annoying to people. This can't be a good forum if the users feel like they're annoying people by participating. There's a certain air of elitism that shouldn't be there. Not in a forum for asking questions. It should feel more welcoming.

I don't know...I mean, how do you get people interested in history? You tolerate even the dumbest questions and encourage people. Everything here gets massively deleted. If you want to say this appeals only to academia, fine. But that's not really the goal, just the people who tend to not get deleted en masse when they comment.

It seems that more and more people are ignorant of history as time goes on and with the internet you have people participating in false messaging, spreading lies and disinformation (in all subjects). Making the barrier to entry as high as it is/as discouraging as it is? Probably not a great way to encourage a love of history.

I consider myself fortunate in that I had a huge interest in WWII as a kid and was able to ask questions of people who were alive then and in the war. Dumb questions a kid would ask. People are starting somewhere. My impression or feeling here is that it's boring to people at best, not tolerated at worst.

I especially dislike the fact that anecdotal information is so heavily policed. Anecdotes add a human perspective to the historical facts. They let us know what people thought, how it affected them, etc.

I understand that you have to keep the train from derailing and it's why things are heavily moderated, but...and I have your point and mine here, which is that you end up with a ghost town of comments and participation.

What I took from? OP is that there shouldn't be a restriction on vague questions, because most of the time people asking the questions aren't historians.

Yes the question should be intelligible, but most of us are asking because we don't know about the subject. Hence we're asking experts

The only problem that I have noticed in this sub, and keep in mind that I've been here for a short while, is that the flaired users who have substantial knowledge of topics are actually overrun by the amount of questions asked, most of which are good and valid questions. Other than that, I think this sub is doing very well.

As someone who has been with this sub from close to the beginning and has been a pretty regular critic of the increasingly restrictive rule changes over the years, I wholeheartedly agree with this opinion. I feel that most of the rule changes smack of the, for lack of a better term, Ivory Tower, and cut off meandering, organic discussions that can lead to very interesting and informative places, drawing connections between disparate topics and offering broad insights.

Worse, I feel that the rules cut off or intimidate people who want to participate, learn more about history, and get involved in discussing, answering, and questioning about history, but may fear that they are not "expert" enough or their answer is too off-topic. I'm a Master's student in international relations and global economics, which certainly involves a great deal of study of history, and I have made some well-received comments and answers in /r/askhistorians, (NB many were made when posting requirements were more lax) (1 2 3 4), but I feel increasingly uncomfortable making even sourced comments on things that I am somewhat or very knowledgeable about for fear of their being deleted or sidelined. Further, there was a time when I really needed the academic expertise of /r/askhistorians for a paper, and posed the question to the effect of "has monarchy empirically been the dominant form of government throughout history?" but it was deleted for involving the deadly phrase "throughout history".

I think what might be a possible way forward is the ability for questioners to select, upon submitting, "open" for broader discussion or "specific" for only flaired, highly-sourced answers. Generally the same rules on quality and correctness could apply to the open questions, but with more tolerance for off-topic and meandering responses.

What would be the harm in having a one-week trial of such a system?

I agree and also am sick of "I heard this is true/I saw this in a TV show is it actually true?" being like half the questions.

If anything were to be changed I think the question requirements could be loosened up a tad, that much I agree with.

I think theres something to be said for later readers who come across a well thought out answer to a poor or apathetic question and appreciate it for what it is. I spend most of my time in the archives of this place and many of the posts I find most valuable in providing a perspective or view I hadnt considered are found at the bottom of the thread with 1 point.

I see the one two punch of pearls before swine and the moderator workload problem that arises by allowing vague and crappy questions. Would a weekly "Diamond in the rough" style post where people can point to valuable posts that may not have gotten the recognition they deserved in their original threads but are valuable in and of themselves as contributions to the askhistorians pool of knowledge be useful in this regard?

Unlike the OP I don't think anything necessarily needs to be changed, but I do think its an interesting discussion.

Vague questions give trivial answers, sorry but no. Plenty of vague questions are allowed, but the bottom line is they rarely get in-depth responses. Some questions can't be answered in depth, only with brevity.

I agree with this assessment 100%. It's something ice noticed in all the other ask/answer subs as well that the Broad, open ended questions tend to illicit the best responses because they allow for the widest range of possible answers. You have a larger pool of information to draw from.

Historians, like anthropologists, have very specific areas of expertise. A vague question allows for experts in various eras apply the parameters of their question to their own field of study. Then we get answers concerning multiple time periods/regions allowing us to compare and contrast different samples.

I have posted about a half dozen very specific questions to AskHistorians over the past year plus that I've been subbed, and only one has received an answer. Here's my most recent one. It seems to me that highly specific questions generally do not get answered.

Hmmm, have the mods thought about using flairs to categorize the questions? That too will also draw more people to answer more questions. Especially individuals who are specialized in a particular era.

Perhaps allow general questions like that on the weekends?

En taro tassadar!

I agree. I've seen many interesting questions that end up with a comment graveyard of "what time period? what time period?" I think that this would be a better sub if expert commenters would either

1. Pick a time period that they know about about and provide that answer with a "In time period X, it was this way ... I'll let others answer to other periods of time"

2. Or provide a general timeline of changes.

Thank you for raising this issue!

1800 upvotes. It tells a story

I agree. This sub is still great but now it feels like we're using historians as reference books. Most of this information I could get with a few hours of research but this sub's value is that it is somewhat more convenient and interesting answers are posted for all to enjoy.

It was much more fun when questions just had to be questions for historians. We've reduced these great minds to walking text books that can rearrange paragraphs to better fit our queries. I'm reminded of science in earlier centuries when scientists' work had to be complete and exacting, thus resulting in a lot of scientists filling in the gaps with clever guesses and unverifiable "facts." The questions we ask here today are great but they're so specific that the answers often have to veer into a ditch to stay on topic.

Can we just TALK here?

The situation is sort of representative of history as a profession, too. Super specialization is killing innovative thinking and the ability to get jobs unless you just happen to have the perfect knowledge background.

Reading these responses was fun, but if I wanted to see something so full of shit, I would've just stood up and looked down the toilet.

In all seriousness though, I think an "AskHistoriansDiscussion" subreddit, akin to AskScienceDiscussion, where these questions can be discussed would be appropriate.

It was better before the mods censored the shit out of this and /r/history to only allow the history they want you to believe, no matter how much evidence is presented.

It's a joke now.

Ah, that reminds me, /unsubscribe