I’ve always had profound admiration for the consistent level of professionalism, attention to detail, and order that’s maintained by the mod team. It’s personally what keeps me coming back- keep up the great work!

I know this sub gets flak for the number of comments that end up getting deleted, but the way you guys moderate things here is what makes /r/askhistorians one of the most consistently quality places on the site IMO, especially given how much growth the sub has seen over time. So, big thanks.

I understand people’s frustration, but I like going into a thread knowing it won’t be filled with fluff or poorly-written non-answers, and comments being deleted are a part of the level of moderation here.

Do you know how the demographics of the mod team compares to the demographics of history academics in general?

All of you Mods should do a video series on Youtube about "How to successfully run a Subreddit" You are just the best and should probably get paid.

Honestly, I really wish that posts had an automatic comment added for "off-topic discussion" or something like that. A lot of times I see entire questions plagued by "comment deleted" trees that make me feel intimidated into not asking questions or commenting further.

Give people a place to talk in a thread that's away from actual answers so that they can actually group-think of questions to ask historians who comment.

N > 100 respondents provided feedback about the status of our book recommendation wiki. We will take a look at the lists and pages in the near future.

Since this was touched upon in this post, and I don't necessarily wanna open up a new meta post I just wanna give my input here.

I feel like the FAQ, while containing a lot of very great answers, is in need of an update. Many linked posts are very, very old (6 years) and contain answers which don't really reflect the amazing quality that is common nowadays. Since many new arrivals are supposed to first check those out I feel it wouldn't hurt to go over them and remove old ones which don't really match those standards. But after all this is just my opinion and I certainly am not aware of the work that currently goes into those. Just a suggestion.

In general I can just join the chorus and say that you are doing amazing work.

Since you didn't mention it here, I'd like to recommend the Ask Historians browser extension as a huge godsend for people who are here to read thoughtful and complete answers, not to ask or answer questions. I didn't make this, I just use it.

EDIT: You did mention it, I'm just blind, consider this end user shameless plugging

Thank you for putting all this together!

It's quite amazing how far this subreddit has come over the years. The original recipe and ruleset has been tweaked for succes, but it has always consistently aimed to provide a place for historical discussion. I'd wager to say that it's one of the very few forums out there where both laymen and academics interact on historical topics. Most historical forums fail to strike that balance between accessibility, public interest and academically sound information or discussions. The fact that this is all done on a voluntary basis is just amazing to behold.

So despite some of the issues I have - and have vocalized - with how I was moderated recently, I still believe that the moderation team is overall doing an extremely good job and tries their hardest to provide a platform for genuine historical discourse. I was an active member for over five years and a flaired user for four. I have only been moderated once and I rarely saw problematic comments remain intact. That's actually quite impressive. It's not always easy to tow that line between allowing diverging theories and curtailing ahistorical contributions. Honestly, despite my unfortunate run-in, I believe that the moderation being performed here is one of the only reasons as to why it's one of the very few subreddits where you can sort by "new" and actually find interesting content.

What surprised me the most upon becoming a flaired user, is how much effort is spent on trying to keep involving flaired users in the community. While at times I felt a bit like an outsider being non-American, the moderation team always tried their best to keep even inactive flaired users involved without any obligations. That's something I always appreciated and I don't think many non-flaired users are aware off. The workload the moderation team faces must be quite overwhelming at times.

I've also always appreciated the daily themes. They may not always be the most upvoted, but they keep the community involved. I also love what /u/Gankom does every week aswell, rounding up some interesting overlooked answers or how /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov will actually manually alert you when there's a question relevant to your specialization, which can be quite daunting to find for flaired users at times. Honestly, this amount of work being done often goes unnoticed, but it's immensely appreciated.

I had a few questions about the census though. Why are there no percentages for South America or Australia? Were they simply that low or not present at all? Also, was it specified what qualifies as historically marginalised groups or was this something each user had to answer for themselves? I'd struggle to answer that question either way personally.

I'm mostly surprised about the average age. I fully expected it to be much lower.

Just a heads up, this isn't census data. By definition, census data is (ideally, practically this is almost impossible) supposed to capture a response from every member of the population and when done right is very reliable.

This is sample data, more specifically self-selection sample data - which, in general, is the most prone to bias. Although it is useful, especially when used casually like in this context, it is simply not census data.

So over time, it seems as the growth rate of this sub is actually accelerating, even as we surpass 1,000,000 subs:

That gives us a weight average of 371 new subs per day.

At that rate, here is when we can expect some future milestones (Yes, I realize growth rates are not likely to be maintained going forward):

Hello, what is the criteria for a historically marginalized group?

Edit - or is it up to the respondent to decide?

I love this sub, thank you to everyone who helps keep it great.

Thank you all for such a lovely sub. I'm one of the silent types who never ask a question myself, but learn so much from someone else's question - usually one I'd never thought to ask.

I appreciate the effort you all put into making this such an educating, thought-provoking, view-point shattering, intelligent, and interesting place. Really love this sub. Thank you!

I really appreciate how much effort had been put into this post and the mod. Kudos to the team. You guys are the little good left in the world.

For what it's worth, whenever people talk about how bad Reddit is, or even just why use it at all, I always point out this sub and how quality it is. I would rather mods error on the side of too strict than not strict enough. The quality is outstanding and I'm constantly blown away about how easy it is get straight to a high quality and sourced comment. By far the best subreddit there it is, and that's due to the work you all due in your free time, along with the work of every day subscribers posting great questions or great answers. I'm sure many people feel the same way.

I love the site and the work everyones puts into it.

The one thing I'd say is it would have been nice to keep the census open a bit longer. I was traveling the weekend of it and thought I'd have time when I get back, but it closed earlier then I expected.

YOU HAVE A PODCAST?

Frantically opens AntennaPod

Upvote for the use of soupçon!!

Can we all get together and get the mods a tv channel since history channel went to shit?

Wow, when I first joined there were about 2000 subscribers. This place has still kept the quality up, even if you have to wade through a lot more [-] Comment removed now. Great work on keeping this place pure distilled infoporn. It's a testament to how people could really use a lesson in just listening in a conversation, rather than trying to inject noise into it.

Australians don't enjoy history?

You guys have done a stellar job with this sub, keeping the content at this high a level for this long is truly an accomplishment.

One complaint (not even the proper word) the structure of reddit as a whole works against this sub and as a result I feel a lot of the responses don't get the exposure they deserve.

To explain: I often see a question thats interesting and it bubbles up on my front page because its popular. But when I click its all deleted comments, which I understand as answering a question takes time and requires some effort. By the time the question is answered properly the post is old and buried under new content.

Wish I had a solution for it, just wanted to bring it to your attention maybe reddit itself could help.

I can only conclude that all the non-binary people are only on Reddit for askhistorians. 😉

thank you. I learn a lot and is my favourite sub.

Just to say, I am one of those lurkers but I love it here.

I think all online spaces should strive to be as curated as this.

How did you come to not include Latin America under "location?" I assume it's an error, but maybe I'm mistaken?

How come South America isn’t an option for location?

Were there no responses from South America?

Is there actually more african and oceanian people than Centre and South American coming to this sub or is the stat wrong?

Time is the best buffer for a person to gain perspective. 20 years seems a good number.

First of all I want to thank the mod team for the heavy moderation. While it's intimidating it keeps the questions clean of joke answers, pun threads or straight up misinformation. I always appreciated the strict rules, but now that I'm actually studying history my apprecation grew more. Mind you I'm a first year who barely started but from day 1 they (teahers) hammered in to properly cite.

Anyhow who knows what the future holds. Maybe I be able to join the team some day, answering questions.

For now everybody have a good day.

P.s. I can't wait for the mess that the 9/11 threads are going to be. Good luck to you mods, you will need it

You didn't report the user or mod responses to one of the last demographic questions. When is this info getting released? I was really looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks!

Best subreddit, thanks to the mod/contributor community and the rules. My one nitpick would be the occasional soapboxing that is tolerated in otherwise good answers.

10 days later I get permabanned for this comment and the discussion that started from mods' reaction to it - having seen the real face of the sub in the proccess. Worth it.

Not a big member but can I ask why the need to dole out demographics on your mods?

Lol, who the hell are the 5% of people who think they're should be less comments allowed? Half the threads I click on already have zero answers.