Apologies if I am reopening too large a can of worms, but I wanted to reinvite discussion about the subreddit’s total ban on “throughout history” questions. As I understand it, the rule serves to prevent a string of deeply annoying an uninteresting questions in the vein of “which army was the most awesome?”
However, I worry that the current rule goes too far in the other direction. By avoiding any and all questions that take on a subject or theme diachronically, the subreddit is reduced to a forum for answering questions about empirically verified minutiae. But professional history is about so much more than that. Much of the discpline’s contributions on the historicity of “throughout history” topics such as nations and nationalism, empire, borders, migration, time, and much else besides would fall to a moderator’s axe here.
Especially in light of the increasingly collaborative and trans-disciplinary nature of contemporary humanities scholarship, I wonder if some revision of that rule would produce some interesting conversations. AskHistorians is a unique community that would foster collaborative answers from scholars with a diverse set of expertise around central questions. If Mellon Foundation-sponsored fellowship programs, hundreds of conferences, and a slate of edited volumes can pull it off, why can’t a site whose mission is to connect the lay public with the contributions of professional history?
Apologies if I am reopening too large a can of worms
It's fine, I had a fishing trip planed for this afternoon.
By avoiding any and all questions that take on a subject or theme diachronically, the subreddit is reduced to a forum for answering questions about empirically verified minutiae.
The corollary to this, is that instead of receiving in depth specific answers, you end up with shallow trivia and "pop history" style answers, which is not the goal nor intent of this subreddit. We found through experience with the "throughout history" type questions, that it invited a vastly disproportionate number of very low quality answers that would have just ended up being deleted anyway.
Much of the discpline’s contributions on the historicity of “throughout history” topics such as nations and nationalism, empire, borders, migration, time, and much else besides would fall to a moderator’s axe here.
Not so much I would argue. The concepts of statehood, national identity, government, migration, etc. are varied from region to region and culture, and can be addressed in those contexts. So you could ask about "Asian concept of statehood" for example. Those would give much more specific and deep answers. Overall questions such as "What was the attitude about Imperialism in history" either would result in a very shallow 4th grade textbook style answer, or either a 800 page book.
Especially in light of the increasingly collaborative and trans-disciplinary nature of contemporary humanities scholarship, I wonder if some revision of that rule would produce some interesting conversations.
We greatly welcome those types of discussion. In fact, some of our moderators are linguists by trade or training and the study of language in societal development and national identity are fascinating components of history. I myself love psychology, sociology, and find anthropology indispensable to the study of history. Also, science is so integral that it gets its own field!
Having said that, with unequal distribution of scientific development in history for example, you can still be able to focus questions down to that level of study based upon region or time period. We know the wheel did not exist in pre-Columbia Americas so our questions about mechanical engineering in that region would be different than if we were asking about Asia or Europe.
If Mellon Foundation-sponsored fellowship programs, hundreds of conferences, and a slate of edited volumes can pull it off, why can’t a site whose mission is to connect the lay public with the contributions of professional history?
Those fellowships, conferences, and edited volumes are the result of months or years of study, writing, editing, and review to produce new scholarship. Unfortunately we at AskHistorians are not an academic institution (unfortunately!) utilizing a medium that allows questions to be asked and then analyzed over the course of weeks or months, and then the results presented at a symposium at a later date. Writing and verifying the information in a 1000 word response, much less an 8000 or even 15,000 word response can take the poster hours to write, as they are essentially writing an essay for the inquirer, and even then those in depth and high quality responses can be buried underneath several inferior ones due to the nature of time and the medium of reddit.
We simply aren't in that business because we can't be. Our answers have to be as specific, focused, verifiable, and immediately defensible. That means basing our answers off of established works.