Hello everyone!

Today, we are making a marginally notable change to the rules governing submissions. The rule known as the "Throughout History Rule" is being replaced with the "Trivia Seeking Rule". The changes to the rule from the existing wording are the following:

Our guiding principle is that if a thread can be summarized as "tell me random stuff about X through history" "tell me random stuff about X" then it falls into this category of trivia seeking rather than looking for in-depth answers, which is this community’s main focus. Questions likely to be removed are those asking about all history and all places at once. Questions likely to be removed are those which are not bounded by a reasonably defined time and/or place, which do not ask a specific question but rather seek random facts, or otherwise lack clarity that would allow for a comprehensive answer to address the question in its entirety. If your question includes the phrase "In your area of expertise", "examples of [X] throughout history", or "What are some facts about [X]", strongly reconsider posting it, or else spend some time to narrow down the scope of what you are asking.

###What Does This Mean in Practical Terms?

Our intention is to improve clarity of the rules for users, and allow us to better enforce them with more consistency:

• This wording better reflects how the "Throughout History" rule was being applied previously, with questions asking about development over time being permitted, and questions that lacked cohesiveness or asked about disjointed miscellany being removed.

• The new rule more explicitly defines the criteria that the original rule was intended to combat, namely threads that don't call for any sort of comprehensive answer, but rather invite users to contribute piecemeal, and (usually rule-breaking) responses. We have nothing against threads like that, but they are better suited to placed like /r/history, /r/askreddit, or /r/TellMeAFact.

Hopefully the wording should make the intent and enforcement of the rule a little clearer than before.

###What Questions Will or Won't Be Allowed Now?

Questions that might have passed muster previously are ones that, while possibly specific to time and/or place, clearly lack a cohesive element which lends itself to a comprehensive answer. We aren't monsters though, so we realize that, especially in history, there often is more than one answer even to a rather narrowly tailored question. So don't understand "comprehensive answer to address the question in its entirety" to imply we are removing any question for which there could possibly be more than one answer, but rather that questions simply shouldn't be inviting haphazard, partial responses!

While a question such as "What are examples of 19th century science and medicine that has been disproven?" would possibly fall on the wrong side of the rule, a similar question, such as "How reliable was science and medicine in the 19th century?" or "How recognizable would the scientific method of the 19th century look to a modern scientist?", would not. While they are similar in topic, the latter two address the concept of 19th century science, while the former simply asks for examples of it, without larger context, which is the core of what makes it "Trivia Seeking". We have nothing against these questions, but simply ask you take them elsewhere (and maybe come back to ask about specific things after!).

Additionally, as regards "reasonably defined time and/or place", we will continue to grant rather wide latitude as regards "specific" with time and place. So for instance, while 14th Century Aquitaine will yield a wildly different answer than 9th century Sweden, we aren't going to be expecting more than "Middle Ages" for a question about the period (sorry Medievalists). Certainly, we always like to see questions narrowed down as much as possible, but we also realize that the role of this sub is for people who don't know much about a topic to learn, and placing excessive barriers to periodization or localization can be an unfortunate 'Catch-22'.

Questions which might have been removed previously or at least seemed in conflict with the existing rule, but will be allowed, are ones that, despite being broad in scope, nevertheless call for comprehensive responses, such as, "How the European concept of sovereignty has evolved since the Peace of Westphalia?", which covers several hundred years.

###What is the Reason For This Rule?

The "Throughout History" Rule has been around since before I was a mod, and to be honest, I don't recall what I thought of the rule when I joined the team, but I can say with certainty that over the nearly two years of doing this, I absolutely agree with its purpose, having seen plenty of threads which were borderline and allowed into devolve into seas of deleted one or two sentence comments.

A rule limiting questions with regard to their scope isn't because those questions are unanswerable, but rather, the rule is born out of more practical concerns, dictated by the medium we are working in. Can those questions be answered amazingly, with fifty experts weighing in with 50 awesome answers? In theory, yes. But in practice, before the rule was implemented, the experience was the those questions generally just attracted lots of marginal answers - brief, incorrect, trivia, etc. So the driving reason for the rule was, in the end, a practical one, as it was felt that in the end the amount of junk comments that resulted far outweighed the amount of good answers. And while we are now changing it a bit, the underlying purpose of the rule remains the same.

By way of example, here is a thread, asking about "No longer popular names", that was not caught early (there was some debate whether it crossed the "Throughout History" line). Two top level responses remained, and here are the deleted comments (with names removed to protect the guilty). As you can see, very few are more than a sentence or two, and often anecdotal. Most are downvoted. Threads like this one are often par for the course with these kinds of questions, and the decision was made that questions which lend themselves to such threads are best kept out of the sub, both for maintaining quality, and our sanity.

###But The Question I Have Violates The Rule!

Look, no rule is perfect, and we know that there might be some good questions out there that are getting removed due to it. We admit that the rules are pragmatic ones, designed to ensure that running this sub, to the exacting standard people have come to expect, is doable. We don't ask you to like this rule, only to accept, at least, that it serves a purpose. And that being said, if you just are dying to ask that 'Trivia Seeker', you still have a few options!

• Suggest something for Tuesday Trivia! This is the exception to the rule! Every Tuesday we have a stickied thread just for these kinds of questions. If you have an idea, send it to modmail and we'll make it happen. If you can't wait for that, we don't pay much mind to questions posed in the Friday Free-for-All thread, so you are welcome to ask there too.

• Argue your case. We make mistakes. And we can be suckers for polite, well reasoned arguments. If you think that your question doesn't fall under the rubric of the rule, the cause isn't lost. We absolutely have restored questions in the past, or else worked with the poster to rephrase the question to fit the rules better. You also are welcome to contact us through modmail before posting, and we're happy to help you formulate your question to remain within the rules.

• Try somewhere else. As noted previously, these sorts of general questions work in other subs, such as /r/history, /r/askhistory, /r/askreddit, or /r/TellMeAFact. We know that the standards there aren't quite up to what we enforce here, but if you hear some cool stuff in a thread made in one of those subs, nothing is stopping you from coming back to /r/AskHistorians to ask a more specific question based off that information!

• Stick another pin in your /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov voodoo doll.

###Makes Sense! Let's Give This a Shot ^^stab

Thanks for the vote of confidence! As this new rule is rolling out, we do ask that you keep a few things in mind. Most importantly, we are going to be getting a handle of how this rule works just as much as you guys! While we think this is better than the old rule, like I said, it isn't perfect, and there is no rule that can totally eliminate any grey-area with this matter. So we're going to be figuring out how exactly this rule is interpreted ourselves, which despite backroom discussion, will only really happen once we deploy it and test it out in the wild. So bear with us a little bit, and don't be afraid to (politely, please!) respond to the removal reason as we're enforcing the rule! Feedback is important, and quite helpful!