It's been a while, but I'm finally back with an update: I'm submitting the final draft of my dissertation today, at long last!! I even included you guys in the acknowledgements :D

I also managed to find much laughter and moral support from the residents of the AskHistorians community on Reddit. The moderators of AskHistorians do fantastic work in maintaining very high standards, and I was very happy to find that many of the other graduate students who frequented that particular subsection of Reddit could understand and sympathize with my travails as a researcher. Several were also kind enough to provide me with useful tips on navigating the Library of Congress and its surroundings, which saved me the embarrassment of getting lost.

Ahhh...feels good to finally have this dooooone.

Back in the spring, I shared the beginnings of my AskHistorians stats project., a calculation of the previous years worth of threads. It's something that I've kept, so figured that people might appreciate an updated snapshot of 2017 to date!

If you want a more exhaustive explanation of how I go about this, check out the linked thread, but in brief, I track two things. The first is the performance of the Top 50 threads of the month, a rough approximation of the questions which hit the 'top' of the subreddit. This is fairly straight-forward.

The second is the overall performance of the subreddit through a 'seven day snapshot', seven days of each month, chosen semi-randomly, and extrapolated upon to give an indication of monthly performance. As people wondered last time, yes, this is how I collect the data.

Anyways though, how is the subreddit doing since the last update? Great! You can compare the stats yourself, as I have appended the stats from the last 'run' below the current one for comparison, and as you can see, for the most part you can see improvement!

###Top Fifty Performance

###Seven Day Snapshot: By the Numbers

###Seven Day Snapshot: By Percent

Month | Average Threads Per Day | Response Rate | Answer Rate | Insufficient Rate | Ignored Rate | ---|---|----|----|----|----|----| Average 5/16-4/17 | 116.67 | 0.39 | 0.37 | 0.16 | 0.45 | Median 5/16-4/17 | 117.08 | 0.39 | 0.36 | 0.16 | 0.45 |

1. Response Rate: The percentage of questions which receive a response of either an answer, or a link to a previous thread or FAQ section. Other visible responses such as follow up questions
2. Answer Rate: The percentage of questions which receive an answer, excluding responses which link to previous threads or the FAQ, except in cases where it is the original author linking.
3. Times: These are for the first visible answer that appeared. This excludes comments which are links, and does not factor questions which remained unanswered. Average excludes outlier threads where the answer was >48 hours after posting. Minimum and maximum only note cases where there was an answer, not a link.
4. Total: These are estimates for the month, based on surveys of seven semi-randomly chosen 24 hour periods with all threads in that period checked, excluding META and Feature threads from the count. One of each day of the week is chosen with a random number generator, with discretion to exclude US Federal Holidays, as these are likely to reflect abnormal traffic and usage patterns, and preventing adjacent days from being chosen.
5. Insufficient: This is the questions which did receive replies, but either none remain visible, or else what is visible is not an attempt to answer the question, such as mod warnings, or unanswered follow-ups.
6. Ignored: This covers questions which received no comments at all, visible or otherwise. It also does not make any judgement on whether the question was answerable, or well phrased.
7. 365 Projection extrapolates these numbers to estimate the stats over the entire year period, assuming that it remains consistent with these numbers of course.

Hello! I'm an editor at ThoughtCo.com, working on a comprehensive resource on the Black Freedom Struggle for Black History Month. I'd love to hear some ideas from historians, history teachers, and history buffs about the Black history topics that often aren't included in secondary school black history month curriculums, but should be. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Found this musket ball metal detecting in an area that was occupied by the French in the early 1700's, and the Spanish in the mid 1700's. It is .62 caliber which is the same as the fusil de chasse musket which was a popular musket in colonial America in the 1700's.

A new exhibit is opening at the de Young Museum in San Francisco that is showing previously collected and newly collected artifacts from Teotihuacan. The new material comes from the tunnel excavations underneath the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent.

My thought for today: I would be totally happy with my life if I never had to speak on the phone ever again (please don't take text/Skype or similar digital communication away though!)

What modern technology would you be happy, nay even prefer, to do without in your day to day life?

You have a time machine, a babel fish, and enough cosmetic surgery to blend in with the locals. You can go to any time and place in Earth's history, but you have to live there a full year and it can't be your area of professional focus (primary interest for us non-academic types). When and where do you go and why?

What things can be said with certainty of writers (whether they be writings of poetry, philosophy, etc) born and active before 500 BCE? Since all we have are not secondary, but tertiary sources (I [in the Roman Period] say that he [in the Hellenistic Age] said that X [in the Archaic Age] said Y) and there is notice of people putting in mouths of ancients their own thoughts, well, you know human mind. We trust naively and then we either keep naive, mistrust anything or simply doubt it until we find out for sure.

So... what things can be said with certainty about Cinaethon-Kinaithon of Sparta or Eugammos of Kyrene or Kadmos of Miletos or Xenophanes of Kolophon? The sources are so fragmentary and indirect that I do not know what to make of it. Something must be true, but what thing exactly and to what degree can we at least measure for certain? And after all even the no-mention in Thukydides or other writers of the Classical Age does not mean they did not exist because they might simply not have been the matter at hand, even in Herodotos' Inquiries, no?

Sorry if "A Song of Ice and Fire" questions give any mods flashbacks, but I recently started a reread and came across the introductory line of bowls of brown, which mentions the stew being added to for years on end.

I've seen references to pottage on other answers here, but only that they could be used for days. Is there any record of a stew or other similar food being used for longer terms?

I've been reading military history for many years, and my reading has focused on the realities of frontline combat, but I could use a break. I find that, historically accurate fiction, is an enjoyable alternative. I've read authors like: O'Brien, Pressfield and Christian Cameron. Can anybody recommend more authors of this type?

Hello, I was wondering if you all have any introductory book recommendation on Charlemange or dark age/early medieval Frankia? Something in the vein of J.J Norwich's A Short History of Byzantium?

Thanks.

A common argument American Conservatives make is that the Democratic Party is racist because the Confederacy and KKK were Democrats, while the Republican Party is pro-civil rights because of Abraham Lincoln, as you can see here, here, and here; or they say Nazism and other fascist groups are actually far left, such as here, here, and here. Obviously, all these claims are false. However, what exactly is the origin of conservatives making these claims that liberals=KKK and Nazis and denying the party switch? Is this a newer thing or has it been around for quite some time? Also, why is there so much illiteracy about this topic? Is it a failure of US Education or the individuals themselves or something else?

Edit: Grammar