The most delightful questions are ones that are sharp, challenging, and show genuine interest on the part of the poster. I especially like historiography questions because they are a great opportunity to review my sources & material.

I use questions outside my immediate area of knowledge as means to expand my own knowledge. My dissatisfaction with the quality of answers in certain areas has led to self-study in those domains.

Among questions that do not violate the rules, I also like:

Questions that are not a Frequently Asked Question or small variations thereof.

Questions that are not based off YouTube videos or some random blog.

Cheers!

I second the idea of the poster having put some effort in beforehand and thus made the question challenging. I also enjoy questions that are off previously beaten paths, e.g. I really enjoyed a past question about the cuisine of Nazi Germany. I am also always happy when someone asks about WWII Yugoslavia and gender and postcolonial approaches to Nazi Germany.

Where I am more skeptical is the kind of question format that we get to see rather often "What did Hitler think about –random thing–?" because I often get the feeling, they explain so little. Answering what Hitler thought about one-legged bearded South Africans is a.) a pain to research while mostly being boring and b.) has little to do with how historical inquiry into the topic of Nazism usually works.

I want to add I am tired of the 'I am a [fill in a noun], what/where/why/how do I [verb].' To me it lacks creative energy and serious consideration, as if OP thought of the question two seconds ago and submitted it.

I like big ships and I cannot lie.

Joking aside, the most interesting questions to answer that we see on this subreddit tend to be ones that are the result of some thought about the past, especially when someone wants to fill in their knowledge about something that's unusual. (Why are there so many depictions of snails in medieval marginalia, that sort of thing.)

If we never got another question about WWII or Hitler in this sub, that would be fine by me. :-)

I was wondering if any of the contributors wanted to share how they view the list of questions from their perspective?

Not to be another echo in here, but it really can't be stressed enough... the rewarding questions to answer are the ones where it looks like the OP really put some thought into their question, or else poses something esoteric that doesn't lend itself well to a simple answer. While our philosophy here is that there is no such thing as a stupid question - I'm fond of Carl Sagan's following quote as an informal motto of the sub:

There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.

those tedious questions can be very tedious, those ill-phrased questions very hard to suss out, and a lot of questions could really do with even 10 seconds of critical self-evaluation before hitting post... It isn't that I won't necessarily try to provide an answer to them, but when someone asks something that is very simple and demonstrates laziness more than anything else, why should I put my time and effort into helping them find out something which doesn't really need an historian to provide an answer for?

Our policy here is that OP only gets to set the parameters of their question insofar as it complies with the rules of the sub. Which means questions which are "Yes" or "No" answers, or else asking for a very specific fact - "What was the name of that big tank battle in the Gulf War?" - will nevertheless need to be answered to the standards of the subreddit. It would need to explain a little about Eastings 73, not just the fact that was its name. But those questions, the ones which are so straightforward, are the ones I'm least inclined to answer. OP didn't take 10 seconds to do their own research, so why should I spend even ten minutes writing a response? The answer to that question, and the answer to "Why was the Battle of Eastings 73 important, and how did it influence changes in armored doctrine over the next several years?" actually will be roughly the same as long as they are within the rules of the sub, but just because I might know the answer (and I would point out that really, I don't. This is just an example I like to use) doesn't mean I necessarily would! The first example... I'd probably avoid, while the second I'd be much more inclined to answer. As I said, it feels much more rewarding to answer a question for someone who looks like they really care.

Do you guys like the questions that neatly fit your own research/interests or do you really enjoy a challenging one?

A challenge, absolutely, but I'm not sure those are mutually exclusive! I think the best questions are ones that fit neatly within your own research/interests, but really pose a question you don't know the answer to off-hand, or else give you a perspective that you have never considered. The ideal of this subreddit is the meeting point between those who know, and those who want to know, and I've chatted with several contributors in the past who definitely feel that getting questions from people who don't know much about the topic is a really big help in their own understanding, specifically in seeing the topic how an outsider does, and better understanding how to make their chosen field interesting for the layperson!

So yeah, I think the best questions are when it is both, and when something posed here helps to push you into thinking about things you maybe never did before.

Many of the answers already mirror my own thoughts, so i won't say more in direct response other than that I appreciate questions where it is clear the poster has done some ground work and I also really like questions on historical theory, methodology, and historiography.

I think the reason many of us prefer these kinds of questions is that they take advantage of our specialization. Yes, part of becoming an expert is just having a firm grasp of the basic historical narrative. We can answer questions of the "please tell me what happened" sort. But our training as historians also focus a lot on methodology, theory, how we know what we know, what kinds of arguments can be made based on historical documents/sources, etc.

At the risk of sounding slightly outputting, it sometimes feels like as waste of my training/time to simply paraphrase a historical narrative that is well laid out in a particular book - and often times I will avoid these kinds of questions since "Read this book" is really not an appropriate response for this community. If, however, I can use the question as a place to jump off and talk about arguments, meaning and theory in such a way that can give people a better idea of what historians are doing as a profession beyond uncovering and laying out historical narratives, then I feel like I can really contribute something using my expertise that is probably much less accessible to the average person.

Something that lets me contextualize my specialty in the economics and culture of the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period. Why did kings wear fancy armour? I am an English archer, how do I get a sword? How did armour reflect civilian fashion?

Also anything that is a good excuse to post pretty pictures of original armours.

I like questions that challenge my knowledge, and work around the fringe areas of what I know. I also like questions that show that the asker has tried google, and is coming from an interest in history, not something based on what they think history might have been like via Game of Thrones or the Forgotten Realms. So I'm likely to ignore yet another question about "What was on the menu in medieval taverns?", for instance.

Ones I am really likely to go for are:

• "Were blackberries eaten in Ireland before the modern era?"^1
• "Were there edible nettles in pre-Roman Britain?"
• "Why were the medieval Irish so obsessed with dairy products?"
• "How did monks in Irish coastal monasteries get food?"
• "How did the Normans get food in Ireland while they were invading?"

and even

• "I made a medieval recipe with strawberries, and it's a bit tasteless. What did I do wrong?"

... and so on. Specific why, where, and how questions, preferably about Irish food or medieval food. I'll try to have a go at any reasonably focused question about European food history, though, and on a day when I've some time I'll try to answer the complete-history-of-agriculture-in-Europe types that sometimes arise.

^1 Yes, but you'd be hard-pressed to find documentary evidence. Archaeobotanical work shows them, though.

Personally I like questions that seem like they would have a simple answer but actually have very complex answers. To me those showcase part of the value of deep historical understanding — they show you how rich a good answer can be, if you have the patience to find it. Obviously the questioner does not always know whether they have a question like that, so it is hard to give anyone advice on how to ask a question like that.

Often questions that are of the "when did so-and-so know X?" fall into this category, because historical knowledge is a pretty tricky thing, trickier than we tend to let on. We tend to see knowledge as a binary state (you know or you don't know), when for anything non-trivial there are many different ways and states of "knowing." Some writing I have done on these kinds of questions.

My favorite questions make me stop and think "Huh, that is a really cool question. I haven't thought about that topic in that way before." I love the questions that make me dive into my sources, challenge me to synthesize information succinctly, and present the results in an informative, yet fun, way. I think my favorite question to answer was "suppose I live in Boston in 1717. How far would have to travel to find a Native American tribe with no direct contact with white people in living memory?". On the surface it seems like it should be easy to answer, but I needed to raid my bookshelf, combine what I knew of English, French, Spanish, and Dutch colonial enterprises (both official and illegal exploration), as well as where the most drastic protohistoric changes took place beyond the frontier. All told, I think I spent three hours on that one answer, but it was a fun three hours!

This is my favorite answer I've written, so I'll look at what I like about it:

• Archival work: I'd much rather spend time looking through museum catalogs and photo archives for answers than I would articles I already kind of half know.

• Uniquely reddit: I'm not going to ever submit this to a journal. I might write about Moche ceramics, but without as many double entendres. While I'm enjoying writing my answer for this, it's what I already write for actual academia anyways.

• Set basis: Contrary to some others, I do like working from specific blog posts, films, or bad history memes. It keeps me focused.

Usually questions that ask for directions in further study or encourage more open exploration. Confirmation or refutation of an assumed fact is a turn-off.

Also, "I am a..." tends to make me not answer a question. Just say, "where would an artisan or average city-dweller find shoes in 13th century Italy?" instead of "I am a citizen of Florence..." I don't know why, I just think it's silly.

I like questions where I can tell a bit of a story. A funny bit is nice too, but given what I study it's not that common.

A look at my backlog would suggest that I'm very eager to talk about secession and its causes, but I actually feel that's very well-trod ground. There are so many ways to say and show "It was slavery" that it's a bit ridiculous, but they tend to repeat and rely on mostly the same sorts of evidence. I have more fun when I can dig into less-known things, in that I know I'm not just repeating other answers to the same degree, there's more room for me to improve my own understanding by revisiting the books, and I'm sharing more that one couldn't just get anywhere. It feels like a little more of a public service to go into the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Compromise of 1850, or the Nullification Crisis than it does to retread the Declarations of Causes again.

Like many of the other flaired users are saying, I like questions that give a challenge and the OP has at least some kind of knowledge behind the question they're asking.

One thing in particular that I would love to see more of, however, is a change in context/setting of questions. I study...well, Native American culture(s) and history. But practically every question here concerns Native Americans prior to Columbus (which most questions are covered by the FAQ) or just after contact with Europeans.

My real area of study is more contemporary issues, but generally from the 1800s onward. Nobody asks questions about natives during the 20th century which concerns areas like the Indian Reorganization Act, the Termination Era, or the American Indian Movement. Those are all thrilling areas, but people seems to be stuck with the mental image of the American Indian being a thing of strictly the past.