#Complaints/Concerns: Responses

Below we've collected a representative comment or two from the many, many comments we got, that are related to some individual topic. Below we've tried to provide some helpful responses/"why do you do this" explanations. The format is like so: comments from the survey are

quoted

and our responses are the plain text.

Please feel free to ask clarifying or follow up questions below!

##Theme/FAQ/weekly threads/sidebar

Any chance of a weekly thread where non-experts can chatter happily?

Really interesting sub-reddit, would love some ''per-day'' events, like random fact friday or something, where a mega thread is open for random discussion, I think it would open up to cool discussions!

We actually publish a Friday Free-for-All thread, meant for conversation and even banter, with relatively relaxed moderation.

Perhaps it would be good to make more use of the knowledge available within the sub, by compiling answers within certain fields into some sort of dossiers?

It's fantastic, but maybe a few more links in the sidebar, aimed at new members, or covering some of the most frequently asked questions would be helpful.

We actually do maintain a subreddit FAQ, which is constantly being refined, linked on the sidebar. Because it's a sidebar link, many mobile users miss it.

I wish there were a way to get threads with interesting answers and discussions stickied or to the top, or maybe a weekly/monthly thread with them collected. a lot of the times when I pop in the upvoted threads don't have much except for deleted comments.

What you're looking for is the weekly Sunday Digest thread and the Best Of page in the wiki, where we collect monthly Best Of winners.

##Topic Areas

Too Euro/US centric

More prehistory questions please!

You are awesome! Need more topics on asian history though.

As much as it would suck to have actual censorship, I feel like there are way too many questions about world war 2.

The issue of diversity in questions is one that the mod-team does struggle with -- because of what you can see above in our census numbers, the subreddit's user base is overwhelmingly young, male and American, which limits the topics and types of questions that we get asked. We're absolutely open to thoughts on how to improve this while also not making it too hard to ask a question.

More Indian history experts please. Its rare to see even basic questions abt ancient India answered.

This is a very common complaint we get here -- the history of the Indian subcontinent is particularly politically polarizing and academic history as a discipline in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and related nations is very much involved in national narrative-building. The field is not particularly mature at this point, and it's hard to find qualified historians who don't use history as politics right now.

##Moderation and Removals

Always demanding sources may stifle conversation since researching for answers may take too long for people to do on their free time. Historians confirmed by flair ought to be able to give answers with less sources, since they might have general knowledge about a subject without remembering specific sources. Great sub!

Our source rule always seems to account for a great deal of confusion here. While we recommend that all answers be sourced, and require a poster to provide sources on request, the goal of that policy is to ensure that people who know something about the topic are the ones who respond. The goal of the subreddit is not to suggest a book and have someone else summarize it. We often find that our answerers with flair actually tend to rely on more sources rather than less, as part of understanding the historical method is sorting among sources and understanding how to build a narrative out of competing points of view.

First hand accounts with some documention/proof should be acceptable. Or at least acceptable with a disclaimer.

This comment seems to relate to our anecdotes rule, which is also often misunderstood. The goal of "no personal anecdotes" is to avoid "my grandfather said this ..." or "in my experience ...", not to mean that no verified, published account of an event can be used here. This topic is covered further in this Rules Roundtable.

Thank you so much. You all do an amazing job. This is far and away my favorite sub.I am not so keen on the new rules regarding speculation. I think that they are a bit too restrictive in that I feel I will be persecuted if I try to make a judgment call or go out on a limb based on historical evidence. It kind of a removes a good amount of the historical process, since there are naturally some things that will never be able to be definitively proven; other historians are not the be all end all of history. Indeed, many incorrect theories, especially in my field, would never have been disproven if people didn't go out on a limb and seek to challenge them. So, I don't see why it is wrong to try and paint a picture if you have the sources to back it up. Ultimately, I think this new rule should be dropped.

Regarding our rule on speculation, we will allow some speculation to stand if its' backed up by research and knowledge about the area. Saying "it stands to reason people did this" is entirely different from "these sources say A, these say B, these others say C, based on what I know I think the truth is part A and part B." For more on this, please consult this Rules Roundtable.

I don't know how much of the moderation time and energy goes towards newer readers, but I would assume that there aren't many people breaking the rules multiple times over an extended period of time. The atmosphere of /r/askhistorians isn't like most of the rest of reddit, and for a typical reader, the simple act of encountering a "normal" comment deleted, quoted by a mod (without the deleted user's name), and a form letter dictating the rule broken, what/why it exists, and a convenient link to the full rules, could cut down on some of the inappropriate comments from well-meaning but ignorant users.

There certainly aren't people who are multiple rule-breakers, because we ban them. But we do take seriously the idea of clarifying our rules, and we do have some prewritten macros to speed up comment removal/correction. What we try to balance is the difference between dropping in "here's what you did wrong, go and sin no more" and leaving that message on every removal -- particularly with large threads with many rule-breaking comments removed, that would clutter the subreddit enormously.

##AMAs

I thoroughly enjoy the AMAs, since they expose me to a lot of topics and perspectives I'd probably otherwise never explore.

Maybe do AMAs. I've never noticed any.

I, uh, well. But joking aside, we had a dip in number of AMAs over the summer; the moderator who was primarily (but not solely) involved in planning them had Real Life intervene. But we do have some upcoming AMAs (list in sidebar) and you can read past AMAs here; we are always happy to entertain suggestions for who to host and especially love it when people have connections to people we might want to talk to.

##Flair

If there were anything I would like to change, I would like to open up flairs to any users who specialized/had a degree in a subject that was not primarily historical. For instance, a music major might have get a user flair for music because music history degrees are exceedingly uncommon, but most music majors will have taken many classes on music history.

I'd like it if there were some nontraditional history experts included. I studied international relations and sociology, both which had large historical components, and which could be useful for some questions but because there are no experts allowed from those fields, those answers get missed.

Our flair application process has never been linked to academic credentials (we have no way to verify them anyway) -- we just want to see good comments in our subreddit, a familiarity with sources in the topic area and the ability to answer follow-up questions. And we give wide latitude to the flairs individual users pick, so please, apply away!

#Complaints/Concerns: Comment Graveyards

Here is a sampling of some of the open-ended responses we got from the survey concerning our infamous Comment Graveyards:

The most frustrating thing is to click on a post with 75 comments and see them all deleted.

Can you flair questions that have at least one attempted answer? I see an interesting upvoted question with comments, click it, and the thread is empty due to rules issues.

This is my absolute favorite subreddit. I think the mods do a great job! However, I am always disappointed when I go into a thread and find a graveyard of deleted comments. Maybe when mods delete or respond to comments that are not up to snuff the original comment could remain for context? That's my only suggestion. You guys rule.

Consider answered/unanswered post flair like /r/tipofthetongue?

It might be helpful to flair threads that are answered by flared users so that you can decide which threads to open. Sometimes you see a thread with 20 comments and you click on it and it's 20 removed comments. It would be helpful to know before hand which threads have been answered by qualified commenters.

It would be cool if questions got flaired or something when they had a real answer. Seeing an interesting question with "50 comments" only to find they were all removed (which happens pretty frequently) is always disappointing. But I realise that the moderation is already time-consuming enough with no-one reading the rules, so no big deal really.

There should be something like a [Answered] or [Good Answer] Tag for threads, its often frustrating to see a interesting Question with lots of Replies, buts its all just Follow-Up Questions, [Deleted] and Mod Posts. A [Good Answer] Tag could help here. I know this might stop some posters from giving a second Answer, but it would improve the quality for the readers.

It'd be great if the number of replies reported on main page took into account those that have been deleted: my main irritation is to see '14 replies' and then go to the page and find none!

So the census was taken before we had Summer Reddit 2016, which was an unusual spike in the number of participants on Reddit in general and thus on our subreddit, and thus the number of threads that hit r/all, which are usually the ones that result in the Glorious AH Comment Graveyards^TM that are a feature of our subreddit. Since the summer, we've actually had a couple of Rules Roundtables discussions on this: First, this one on "Why don't you have an Answered flair;" second, this one on "[removed]," which may hopefully answer some of the questions about those policies.

With regard to the issue of the comment count not matching the number of comments that actually show, this actually came up in a discussion with Reddit admins pre-election, though we haven't heard much from them since; there is other drama affecting the admins at the moment. At the time, though, they were receptive to the idea that [removed] shouldn't count in the subreddit comment count that's shown.

Interesting to see all the things that are little-known, like the podcast, books and resources, and (a little less surprising) tumblr and twitter accounts. The books and resources and wiki were major efforts when I first started reading here, so they come to mind frequently for me, and the podcast is up my alley.

I wonder what else could be done to raise awareness, particularly around the books and resources - maybe a quarterly sticky (left up for ~2wks) to discuss it in general and suggest revisions?

Is automod configured to post something whenever someone asks about a book or podcast recommendation? That could be another solution to raise awareness within threads (could also argue it adds clutter).

Just spitballing...

Either I'm misunderstanding something or people haven't responded very honestly. 88.5% responded that they asked a question within the last three months, but 64.06% answered "I have never asked a question" in response to "How frequently do you consult the wiki Frequently Asked Questions page, or search the subreddit, before asking a question?"

#"Other" Historical Topics

From the Historical Topics table above, "Other" includes:

• 18 - 19th Century
• 19th Century U.S./Reconstruction Era/Race
• 19th century
• 19th century Western European
• African Diaspora
• American Civil War
• American revolution
• Anarchist
• Archaeology
• Architectural
• Art
• Belarus
• British
• British and Irish specifically
• Cold War
• Colonial and Postcolonial
• Commerce
• Contemporary
• Critical theory
• Crusades
• Diplomatic
• Early Modern European
• Early Modern/ English Civil War
• Eastern Roman Empire
• Environmental
• Food
• France
• Germanic and Norse
• Germany
• Golden Age Piracy
• Hanoverian and Victorian Britain
• Ideas/Intellectual
• Indian
• Irish
• Japanese
• Jewish
• Labour
• Late Medieval / Renaissance!
• Local /Regional American
• Maritime
• Medical
• Meme
• Mexico
• Modern
• Music
• Napoleonic
• Native American
• Nautical
• Naval warfare
• New England
• North American & US
• North American First Nations
• Northern European
• Northern European (Scandinavia)
• Norway
• Numismatics
• Ottomans
• Personal and social histories movements or famous people as well
• Political
• Politics and Law
• Psychology/Mental Health
• Revolutionary
• Russian
• Scandinavian
• Slavery
• Social/Microhistory
• South Asian
• South and Central Asian
• Soviet and post-Soviet
• Subaltern/postcolonial modernist nonsense
• The Reformation and the Thirty Years' War
• Tribal Europe
• Trivia or anecdotes
• US Political
• US Presidents
• Vikings
• Women
• World War 2
• agriculture
• early medieval
• education
• food
• historians
• historical linguistics
• international
• migration
• mughal
• municipal histories / city planning
• museums
• nationalism
• native peoples
• norse
• performance simple tasks
• pirates
• political
• race and violence
• reptillian overlord
• ship construction
• social
• sports
• stuff that rounds out influences and shapes who people are

Huh... 41% of respondents spend "hardly any" of their reddit time on AskHistorians? That surprises me.

I suppose it's possible that even though they spend "hardly any" of their Reddit time here, they spend so much time on Reddit altogether that it's still a significant amount, but I rather doubt that 41% of the people responding are on Reddit half their waking hours.

Doesn't that kind of render the data from the census suspect? If nearly half the people filling it in aren't regulars, is there any guarantee that the census reflects the userbase accurately?

Admittedly, my only classes on statistics were in highschool and I know zilch about sifting through census data, but I'm sitting here scratching my head a little.

This might not be easily answerable without some data-shifting, but does the picture of the census significantly change once you filter out the "hardly any" sub-group of respondents?

What historical topics do you find most interesting?

Economic history 0.2%

That explains a lot, unfortunately (for me).

88% claim to have asked a question in the last three months, but 64% also claim to never have asked a question. Methinks the results of the first one are reversed. It would match up much better to the numbers in the follow-up questions.

Do you guys have plans for the next census (I know, I know)? Just curious because 200k, 325k, 500k, aren't evenly spaced milestones. Is it time-based or is there some other method to your madness?

Also interesting that the 325k census received significantly more responses than both this one and 200k.

91% approval for 'How are the mods doing?' Way to go mods, you have an approval rating straight out of a dictatorial election!