Hello and welcome to the tenth edition of our ongoing series of Rules Roundtables! This project is an effort to demystify what the rules of the Subreddit are, to explain the reasoning behind why each rule came into being, provide examples and explanation why a rule will be applicable in one case and not in another. Finally, this project is here to get your feedback, so that we can hear from the community what rules are working, what ones aren't, and what ones are unclear.
Today, the topic for discussion is our rule on Civility! This rule exists to ensure that debate on /r/AskHistorians is focused on competing historical interpretations, and does not devolve into personal insults or ad hominem attacks; and that users treat one another with courtesy and mutual positive regard. The rule reads:
Civility
All users are expected to behave with courtesy and politeness at all times. We will not tolerate racism, sexism, or any other forms of bigotry. This includes Holocaust denialism. Nor will we accept personal insults of any kind.
The rule on civility is quite important to us, so much so that it's our first rule and has been referred to (not entirely jokingly) as our Prime Directive. That's because the entire intent of AskHistorians is to answer questions about the past, and the historical arena can be a contentious place. The civility rule is important to make sure that we keep answers and conversations at a professional, academic level.
##Why do you need a civility rule?
Reasonable people can disagree about historical interpretations, and people can get quite passionate about their "favorite" or preferred interpretation of historical events.
This can operate on a couple of levels:
Among professional historians, there's competition among interpretations of history that occurs on an ongoing basis, and in many fields this takes on an almost generational basis, as the younger scholars of _________ field revise and take issue with interpretations that the older scholars of that field grew up with. These reinterpretations of history, or revisions of history, can make or break professional careers, which means that debate can get quite heated at times and that part of training new historians is teaching them how to debate respectfully.
In the non-academic world people can get quite passionate and emotional over issues of historical memory, especially with regard to recent history. (This is one of the reasons we have our 20-Year Rule, but I digress.) How we understand, talk about, and memorialize historical events such as the American Civil War, the Holocaust, the atomic bombings of Japan, the Civil Rights movement, and others like them is difficult and contentious, and feelings can run high on all sides of an issue. This is one of several reasons why we require our users to ask questions neutrally.
##What do you mean by civility, anyhow?
Some of this is covered in the text of the rule above, but the major points are:
Beyond those key points of the rule, we generally will remove content that is overly sarcastic, that attacks a user rather than the user's ideas, or that is hostile to an individual user or is hostile to a group of people.
##Wait, so how do you decide if someone is being uncivil?
More than perhaps any of our other rules, moderating based on civility requires us to take a bit of a "know it when we see it" approach. We realize that our user base on AskHistorians is global, and that standards of what's considered "bad language" vary from country to country, and that language issues can cause people to seem rude without the intent of giving offense. We will also use at a poster's comment history to see whether they have shown a pattern of incivility using their account, to decide whether they fall on the side of "possible misunderstanding" or "usually abrasive." To be clear, this is not the only metric we use, but if the user history demonstrates a pattern of being abusive, we take that into account.
That said, though, we tend to err on the side of removing content if we think it's not being posted in good faith or if we believe the intent is to mock another user. This brings us back to the central point of AskHistorians, which is to get answers about the past; and that doing so requires us to be able to be civil in our interactions with one another.
##OK fine, but how do I argue with people if I can't call them a poopy head?
Well, you don't argue with people -- you argue with their arguments. If you happen to subscribe to a different theory about how a historical event happened, or how it should be interpreted, share it! And make sure that you can cite your sources, answer follow-up questions and, in general, follow the other rules of this subreddit. Disagreeing with the interpretation is fine, just don't let that extend into disagreement with the person.
##I have some thoughts about this rule, where do I share them?
We welcome thoughts about the civility rule, and invite you to share them in the comments below. The point of the Rules Roundtable series is to get feedback from the community on our rules and policies, after all.
##What should I do if I see people being uncivil in a thread?
Let the moderators know, and we'll sort it out. Resist the temptation to fight fire with fire, and either use the handy "report" button below the offending post or comment, or send us a modmail.
##I think that a comment of mine was removed unfairly, what do I do?
As we've said in previous roundtables, we on the moderator team are the first to admit that we won't always be right, but we will make every effort to be fair. If you think that we misinterpreted a question or comment of yours and removed it unfairly, you are always welcome to send us a modmail to politely state your case.
Regarding the historical revisionism argument, my understanding is that there are two schools of thought in academia regarding Holocaust denial and other versions of historical revisionism: Either (A) Don't deign to engage it, lest you give it credibility or (B) Don't allow blatantly false ideas to go unchallenged.
Clearly AskHistorians has opted for option A and I'm wondering how that determination was made. I certainly understand option A but I've always been of the mind that Louis Brandeis was correct in asserting "(i)f there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
On a much less philosophical level, I think I'd benefit enormously if the excellent posters of AskHistorians brought their considerable knowledge and education to bear on such topics, thereby making it easier for the rest of us when we encounter such individuals and ideas.
We do not tolerate Holocaust denialism or similarly offensive examples of historical revisionism
Could you provide some examples of "similarly offensive historical revisionism?"
The two things that spring to my mind are the Armenian genocide (denied by the Turks), and Unit 731 activities in Manchuria during the Pacific War. If Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan can drop subtle hints toward Korea and China regarding 731, can everyone else deny it, too?
This rule is very straightforward and I think it is working well.
I always liked the example set by some parliamentarians during a floor debate; while the subject matter is a bit different, (and sometimes their words are a bit over the top) did does drive home the point that you are supposed to be arguing against the argument and not the person delivering the argument.
Something along the lines of:
"I would like to thank my most august colleague and her highly esteemed junior minister from Toledo Ohio and the words they have shared with our humble body concerning the proposed tariff on Japanese television remote controllers. However,..."
Seems straightforward enough. The one catch, it seems to me, is the rule against "offensive revisionism". Holocaust denial is a pretty clear-cut case, but where do you draw the line? Almost everything you can say about history is offensive to someone (see: Armenian genocide, Japanese war crimes, anything that ever happened in Ireland or on the Balkans).
I think this rule is very important. Keeping things civil is key to successful discussion, as that makes it a cooperative endeavour of searching the truth, not a competition over the title of 'most clever human'.
Hey team - I love your sub.
This idea for the Rules Roundtable is a great one - I just suggested that we do it over at /r/changemyview as well.
Particularly when it comes to civility and low-effort/joke posts, I do think the "broken window" theory applies - you need to moderate actively to maintain the spirit of the sub as you envision it. Thank you for doing the work that makes this sub the great place that it is.
Thank you and /u/Gregory_K_Zhukov for getting into this with us. One question I have is about the parenthetical in the section on discrimination that reads (including anti-semitism). I think it's unnecessary for many reasons, and I think listing it as the only specific qualifier is problematic. I believe that removing it from the rules and treating anti-semitism equally with all the other form of discrimnation not delineated in the rules would be better for the subreddit in the longrun.
I have a meta comment/question, not really related to the civility rule.
Would you (the mods) consider having an automated top level comment posted to each question that says something like "amateur answers and discussion should be posted under here."? And then don't delete those.
The problem this would address is that there are many more questions posted to this sub then professional answers. Professional answers, of course, take some time and while waiting for an answer people have comments and questions, but no where to post them.
I think the hyper level of moderation in this subreddit is neither civil nor polite. Most of the times I have posted here, my comments have been deleted or cited. And I was posting in good faith all of those times, asking honest questions or attempting to provide responses to others.
I don't think it's polite to delete what people say.
The only reason I haven't removed the subreddit is because occasionally there is a very interesting question asked. I would prefer to be able to read what everyone (or at least most people) say, though, instead of a select few of historian elite.
Maybe other ways of privileging the responses of respected/authoritative/expert historians could be devised, such as tagging the expert posts with flair or somehow bumping them up in a thread.
Again, I think calling the deletion of masses of other people's speech civil or polite is pretty absurd.
I will be saving a copy of this comment because I like what I wrote and I honestly don't know if you will delete it or not, even though this is a thread where you are specifically asking for feedback, and I attempted to give it in a neutral way even though I feel strongly about censorship.
Good day to you sir good day!