If I may start by quoting the conclusion of your post:

I don't think AskHistorians should suddenly allow low-effort posts because someone watched a TV the night before, but I think dismissing an entire medium out of hand is problematic.

I'd like to be clear that in the thread which sparked this, the comments which referenced the documentary were all low effort. Of the 30 people (so far) actually referencing the documentary (not just mentioning it sideways) only 3 managed to write 4 sentences. None wrote more. I think we all agree that this is not what we want here. It is these type of posts which made us post the original mod note.

As I understand it, your issue is not with the removal of these posts, or with the mod note per se, but with the phrasing of the mod note. It says "tv shows do not meet the subreddit standards for acceptable sources". That's a sweeping statement and as with all sweeping statements it will not be true in all cases. There certainly are good historical documentaries out there, but I'd say there are a lot more bad historical (or 'historical') documentaries. Fact is that many of them are made to entertain rather than to educate, and they'll simplify or even twist things for the sake of the story. Even if notable academics appear in a documentary, their words may have been taken out context. That is why I clarified that documentaries can be part of a comprehensive and informative response, if they are properly contextualized. Only someone who has the expertise to separate the good from the bad documentaries, to separate the actual information from the soundbites, can judge the quality of a documentary.

When I see Adrian Goldsworthy in a documentary on the Roman army, I can tell when he's dumbing down a subject rather than explaining it. I can tell because I have the relevant expertise, and I have his books. Now I might write an answer referencing a good documentary he's in, but I'd also include some of his books in such an answer. The nature of documentaries is such that they're never as in-depth as a book. Documentaries also often lack detailed sourcing, whereas books (of the kind we like here) have notes saying where exactly (down to page numbers) their information is from.

You compare documentaries with paintings, poems, and pottery as sources (and with podcasts - but they actually are frowned upon here). I think there's a fundamental difference here. Paintings, poems, and pottery are often used as primary sources, whereas documentaries are secondary or even tertiary. With primary sources, we have to make do with what we have (sometimes a lot, sometimes not so much) - we can't hold them to standards. What we can do, is contextualize them ("remember this was painted by an upper-class white guy, thus..."). Secondary sources we can hold to standards. We can expect them to treat a subject fairly, to reference their sources, to not be biased, etc. If a secondary source is not perfect, we could still allow it if there's some context as to why it's not perfect, but no amount of contextualization will allow someone to use a neo-nazi source on this sub (unless the question is on neo-nazi ideology).

So that's the deal with documentaries and this sub. They are secondary sources of which it is not obvious that they're proper sources (as opposed to peer-reviewed articles or books published by academic presses), so some context will be necessary. The person providing such context should be knowledgeable enough about the subject to judge the quality of the documentary, and such a person will have other sources (where they got their knowledge from).

Edit: updated the number references in the thread which sparked this from 22 to 26 28 30.

Do documentaries ever provide citations, like in a companion website? Genuinely asking, I have no idea. Theoretically there's nothing wrong with the medium, I actually would feel perfectly comfortable with someone citing Janet Stephens' youtube videos on historic hair, because she is very clear about where she's pulling information from. And while she is academically published, most of her research would be difficult, if not darn near impossible, to easily present in any other way.

I just think the rules need tweaked to remove a bias.

I don't actually think the rules specifically say anything against using a documentary per se, but say that they would need to be used as part of an answer. See this section.

So this answer got long, so I'm going to break it up into several parts. I also need to acknowledge an assist from /u/georgy_k_zhukov via our ongoing mod-mail conversations on this.

1) The removed responses would have been removed regardless of medium.

There are at least 25 comments as I compose this that literally say "hey watch this documentary" or "hey there's a cool thing on Netflix" or "omg I watched this and I got so hungry for some Chinese food," some with a link, some not. Some maybe add another sentence, many don't.

That is less than the number of comments saying "hey there's no General Tso's in my country," but not by much (those were also removed).

Those violate our rules not in the sense that they reference a documentary, but because they provide no additional context, don't explain what the documentary is or what it says about the question, or provide any additional information.

(What would be outstanding would be if someone who had watched the documentary would provide a rundown of what claims it makes and what evidence it uses to support those claims, but that hasn't happened yet, at least not while I'm writing this.)

2) Can we verify the reliability of a documentary?

One of the things we try to do as mods is vet sources best we can, and it is easy to check up on books through reviews and the amazingness of Google Books! It isn't easy for us to check a documentary. To be clear, even though we are not all subject matter experts on everything, we have areas of overlap; and one thing that you learn in grad school or in self-study is how to evaluate a source. Because documentaries tend not to cite sources, it's very difficult for us to vet those.

3) Are documentaries appropriate sources? I would have to issue a firm history professor answer:

It depends, but not by themselves.

ANY source, regardless of medium, has to be critically interrogated. You rightly say that in your comment here. Every source has a bias, and every source is a tile in the mosaic that we make history out of. Documentaries are somewhat more tricky in this regard because we, as humans, tend to relate to seeing and hearing other people and have deep trust in what they say, even if it is only one viewpoint.

So let's take on a massive subject for just a minute: Ken Burns' Civil War documentary. People flipping LOVE THAT DOCUMENTARY. But it is extremely problematic in a number of ways for people who study the Civil War, and the fact that it has shaped the understanding of the war for millions is a source of dismay for many in the historical community.

To pick on just one piece of this, so that the thread doesn't devolve into a The Civil War historiographical debate: Burns relies heavily on Shelby Foote as a narrator. Foote is an amazing narrator and a genial good fellow by all accounts, but he is not a great historian -- he refuses to acknowledge that slavery was what defined the Confederacy as a political entity, thinks that recent scholarship on black contributions to ending the war is overblown, and consistently wraps all Southerners into a narrative when he's actually only talking about white Southerners. (See, e.g. Eric Foner's section in Ken Burns's The Civil War: Historians Respond. ed. Robert Brent Toplin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996; it is an amazing takedown of the narrator.)

That doesn't mean that one shouldn't read Foote, but it means that Burns' reliance on him biases his documentary in a particular way that isn't apparent to viewers, unless you have also read the literature or at least the main literature on the war itself.

4) Documentaries are, generally, entertainment.

Now, to be clear, The Civil War is a pretty great documentary. But it's aimed at a popular audience, not an academic one, and its primary purpose is to tell a story that will be entertaining so you will keep watching. Documentaries generally have less explication than pop history books, which we also tend to not like people to use as sole sources.

5) So how do we use documentaries well as sources?

Quoting /u/georgy_k_zhukov directly, because I can't really say it any better:

If a user can provide critical analysis of a documentary, it can make for a great contribution to a answer that draws on other sources as well, but it makes for a poor one on its own, no matter who is behind it.

Because I am not familiar with The War, allow me to use Ken Burns' The Civil War as an illustrative example. It is an incredibly simplified, abbreviated and, in places, outdated or misleading overview of the American Civil War. It contrasts very sharply with James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, probably the best single-volume overview of the Civil War and about the minimum level of source I would expect from a user answering a question about the American Civil War. Note: it is an overview, introductory reading, and cannot afford to be exhaustive on any one subject. Yet, while The Civil War is about six ten hours in length, Battlecry in audiobook form is about forty hours in length. The former is the work of an interested amateur; the latter the product of a professional historian who has devoted a substantial portion of his life to the subject. The Civil War is still quite entertaining and enlightening to a complete novice, but by no means whatsoever would I consider it an acceptable source to use here or in academic writing generally.

Now, this is not to demean either Ken Burns or his shows. As documentaries go, they tend to be good ones. But it's more a failing of the medium as a whole. It would be exceedingly difficult to find a documentary that did meet the standards of this sub, and for the same reasons. Documentaries are almost never long enough to provide context and perspective in the way a monograph can, and they usually lack expert writing. They are educational entertainment, not scholarship.

And no, Dan Carlin, being an interested layman who relies largely on secondary scholarship, is definitely NOT an acceptable source here. We are a sub built around peer-reviewed academic history, and that is not likely to change.

I think the point you raise is a good one, and /u/Searocksandtrees has poorly phrased the point outlined below, but they do preface it with the really key issue:

If your expertise in this topic does not extend past watching a tv show, do not post.

This has been my point to draw from this thread. Documentaries might well be useful pedagogical tools, useful illustrative sources, but they require a level of contextualisation which necessitates familiarity with published literature or primary sources. Thus, they should not really be used as standalone sources.

An acceptable answer under our rule must be able to draw on some citable secondary sources (which documentaries would qualify as) but it would fall foul of the rule: 'Do I have the expertise needed to answer this question?' if documentaries were the only source you could draw on for a number of reasons listed at various points in this thread (such as non-cited sources, explanation, and peer-review).

A good answer will be able to provide a level of depth, across multiple sources of varying types (primary, secondary, less so tertiary), which may include a documentary or an encyclopaedia entry (eg. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), but it will not be wholly reliant on those sources.

As such, /u/NotSafeForShop, I think a key point to take away from this is that good answers which conform to the sub' rule are not the result of comprehension exercises. Our voluntary respondents should not merely demonstrate that they can regurgitate dictionary entries (although it happens) or follow a narrative in a documentary. It does happen, sometimes there isn't much more to say, but these questions are rather rare - in my experience - as a person with relevant expertise will flesh something out beyond:

Tso Shih-hai (1870s–1945), Qing Dynasty, Republic of China, and Mengjiang general and official in Inner Mongolia.

I don't think anyone with any level of expertise is really utterly discounting documentaries as a supplementary source, but the point was worth raising for clarification.

Well, i would not use a documentary as a source in any university level work. May be as a critical tool to reflect some contemporary ideas on a specific subject or to have a trendy pop culture introduction in a undergrad course. In the vast majority, TV shows or documentaries are destined to the public and are either entertainement or vulgarisation. Most often then not, they lack the qualities of a serious synthetic work.

I would like to inquire the subreddit on their opinion of the short Documentary series "World War II in HD Colour". While I have never used this as a point of reference for any of my posts, I am curious as to if you guys think it is an acceptable reference for historians. I watched it a couple years ago and today still think it is one of the best Documentaries around, both in style and information. A big bonus is that a lot of the information, dates, names, and claims made by the documentary were definitely backed up in my later historical readings, helping support that the writers were definitely well researched.

There is of course also the Hardcore History podcasts by Dan Carlin, which I listen to on a regular basis. I think it's definitely not a good source, as I believe (and agree) that the consensus on Carlin is that he has a good historical background and groundwork of research but focuses more on the emotional side of conflicts and his presentation of facts isn't always 100%, and is more built for those with little knowledge of the topic(s) and for entertainment.

I asked one of the mods about this and the thrust of their response was:

We are deleting responses that, for the most part, literally say no more than "hey go watch this documentary." Like in a sentence, or a sentence fragment.

Those violate our rules not in the sense that they reference a documentary, but because they provide no additional context, don't explain what the documentary is or what it says about the question, or provide any additional information.

On the one hand, I can see how this type of response might run counter to the sub's goal of producing high quality top level comments. On the other hand, I feel that there should be some wiggle room to allow users to suggest outside avenues to pursue. For instance, a comment along the lines of:

I'm not an expert in this subject, but I'm aware of a well reviewed textbook on this subject that you should look at. Here's a link.

should probably be permitted. If the suggested source is somehow contentious, this comment would stimulate a debate on its merits. Without a comment like this to ignite it, such a debate might never occur and/or the OP might never have even been made aware of the existence of the source.

I believe users should be given the opportunity to direct posters to relevant citations in this fashion, be they literary or filmic. If I'm aware of an entire book that was written specifically on the question OP is asking, even if I haven't read it it seems ridiculous not to allow me to direct them towards it. I feel the same should be the case with documentaries. Once the suggestions has been made, the floor will be open for users who are familiar with the work to discuss and debate its historical merits.