Hi there! Do you spend too much time reading /r/AskHistorians? Do you have excellent google-fu abilities, and a desire to contribute to the sub even if you're not ready for a flair yet? Well...why not work towards becoming a FAQ Finder?

Back in the early days of the subreddit before things were quite so set down in stone, the wonderful /u/searocksandtrees got a flair thanks to their efforts to find and link to old answers; they eventually became a pillar of the moderation team. And we basically would love there to be more people doing what /u/searocksandtrees does. We're always thrilled to see people link to old answers and the FAQ, and want to better encourage more users to assist on that front. It not only helps build more involvement in the community, but also helps the Askers get a response to their questions which might be overlooked, but nevertheless can be addressed by quality content in our archives.

As a result, we've decided to alter our Flair Application threads so that people can also apply for a FAQ Finder flair (which would also grant you the ability to add things to the AskHistorians FAQ) and do a bit of promotion of it (such as in this thread!) This FAQ Finder flair has some somewhat different requirements to regular flairs: specifically, we want FAQ Finders to show evidence that they have:

• Consistently helped find previous answers on this subreddit, on average, a couple of times a week for a period of three months - we want people with the flair who'll keep FAQ Finding at a steady rate well into the future.

• Used a reasonable level of discernment to find answers - we don't need FAQ Finders to be an expert in the topic area they find answers for, but the answers found should be clearly relevant and should look to be as in-depth and well-sourced as is currently expected in this subreddit.

• That the FAQ Finding posts uniformly credit the original author (unless their account was deleted), and helpfully and courteously explain the general subject of what they are linking to. We want to avoid FAQ Finders simply dropping the link with no contextual information, or attempting to summarise the post - the FAQ Finding post shouldn't feel like a TL;DR for the post.

Of course, we see the FAQ Finders as being something of an ambassador to the sub, and we'd want to make sure that you made a good ambassador:

• We will hold you to the same standards we do other flairs with your behavior. "FAQ Finder" isn't license to break rules in the subreddit, of course, and we will take into account a history of rule breaking in the sub. Likewise we will take note of unsavory behavior elsewhere. If you are awesome in AskHistorians, but railing about the Jewish World Conspiracy in a Neo-Nazi sub, you are not getting the flair.

So what are the benefits of becoming a FAQ Finder?

• First, you get that fancy FAQ Finder flair next to your name.

• Second, you get editing privileges to the Subreddit's FAQ, which allows you to save those results more permanently.

• Finally, you get to join the vaunted ranks of the /r/AskHistorians flaired community, joining in the backroom revelry of the exclusive panel subreddit, where we all shitpost and complain have off-topic chats, organize online games, and even arrange IRL meetups.

Anyway, if you fill all the requirements, Apply for Flair! And if this is something you're keen to do, here are some resources for finding appropriate answers that might be helpful:

• A link to the FAQ - lots of answers to common questions are already in here!

• A link to the list of Flaired User Profiles - if you know of a flair in that area, they may have a Flaired User Profile which lists their previous answers

• Reddit's explanation of the specifics of how Reddit search works and an imgur post with a cat gif showing it in action

• If you want to search AskHistorians using Google search rather than Reddit's (not great) internal search function, just type in "site:reddit.com/r/askhistorians" as well as what you want to search for. E.g., if someone's asked about whether the 'socialist' in 'National Socialist' had anything to do with communism (a common question!), searching for "site:reddit.com/r/askhistorians socialist nazi" brings up several posts that are relevant.

• Reddit stats wizard /u/stuck_in_the_matrix has recently created a quite powerful Reddit search which can be accessed here or - if that link is still not working - here.

*Additionally, there are whole courses you can do to improve your ability to search databases like Google or Reddit, but often it's about thinking about different search terms that someone might have used instead - e.g., if you're searching for something about the Cold War and 'Russians' gets no hits, try other search terms: 'Soviets', 'communists', 'the USSR', 'Khrushchev', 'Stalin', etc.