[META] Have any of the flaired users figured out how to list answers as service/outreach?

by axiompenguin

There's a lot of people putting a lot of effort into some great public history on this sub. I'm a mathematician, and I'm not entirely sure how this process works in other fields or outside of academia, but I assume that at least some departments really do mean service to the general public/community outreach is valued. I know some people have figured out Twitter, but has anyone shared writing from Reddit for work?

keyilan

I haven't come up with a formal way of doing it, in large part because the quality of what I write here isn't going to be the same as what I'd submit in a paper, and even if it were, no one would think it were. Also I feel like it'd just come off as padding my CV. Instead, if someone wants to connect Reddit me to IRL me, the breadcrumbs are there, including @ mentions of my academic Twitter handle from the AskHistorians account when my answers are shared there. That's honestly about as comfortable as I am to publicly be seen as using Reddit, at least until either Reddit's reputation improves drastically or AskHistorians moves to Voat (just kidding).

crrpit

This is something I've thought about a bit, and I've been more proactive than some of the other flairs in linking what I do here with my public academic profile. I've not included it in my CV though because I think it requires too much explanation. Reddit is not yet an obvious platform for academic outreach, so you need to contextualise what it is and what the purpose is. I've snuck it in in some ways - for example, discussing how it's affected the way I've taught genocide denialism (demonstrating engagement with contemporary issues/debates, digital environments, whatever buzzwords seem useful).

One thing I think would help a lot, especially in a UK context, is having access to post views. Being able to point to a hard metric as evidence of successful outreach and impact would be great. It's the kind of thing we're always under pressure to provide to show our activities are worthwhile. Especially compared to most other forms of academic digital outreach, we're probably talking orders of magnitude more reach (my academic blog readership is... minimal).

hannahstohelit

Personally, while I've included a non-smart amount of personal info about myself on Reddit over time (including my first name in my username, lol), I've been pretty careful not to explicitly link my name and IRL identity to my Reddit account in an academic context because I don't need my professors or whoever knowing how much I love David and Patrick's relationship on Schitt's Creek or something like that. (I even have a Twitter account just for my Reddit identity.) By the time I felt that my answers were good enough that I would possibly want to share them, I'd already accumulated enough username recognition/goodwill under this username to become flaired, and decided that it wasn't worth it. Occasionally I regret the decision, but not much.

Zeuvembie

You mean aside from the FAQ, the twitter, the facebook account, the Sunday Digest, and the podcast? I mean, there was that one news article last year, too. So I think there's a lot of outreach going on, maybe you could be more specific?