On /r/AskHistorians, we get hundreds of questions every week, ranging from Polynesians navigation and the daily life of Egyptian women, to what Hitler liked for breakfast. Many of those questions are thought out and insightful inquiries, but we also know that we receive our fair share of questions which fall flat or induce a bit of head-scratching as to how the premise was reached. But while it can frustrate at times, it also is one of the greatest strengths behind /r/AskHistorians.
One of the core principles that we follow here for any question which is asked in good faith is best summed up by Carl Sagan when he said:
There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.
For this reason, we try to moderate questions with as light a touch as possible. Most removals are done solely on technical grounds and without regards to the premise, and most questions removed for their content are a reflection of our judgement that the question was not asked in good faith. Yes, that does mean that questions we approved can sometimes be naive; it means they can be ill-phrased; and certainly some didn't receive any self-criticism, but it is nevertheless someone trying to learn, and removing a question because of its premise does little to help them understand where they went wrong.
Some questions certainly are wrong in their assumptions, but short of them violating the rules about soapboxing, we will usually approve. If a question has a wrong premise, again, removal isn't going to help the user, so there are a few possible approaches we encourage:
Closely intertwined with this is the notion of 'scope' for a question. As already made clear with the discussion on the 'Example-Seeking Rule', we prefer questions to be narrow and focused, but we also do our best to accommodate the lack of pre-knowledge that many people have in asking questions. This means that especially the further away from 'standard curriculum' history, the more understanding we are of the broadness of a question. So while a 20th century military history question we'd prefer to see limited to, say, World War II, a question about indigenous people of what is now the United States we'd allow to be asked as "Native Americans before Columbus", since while asking about specific nations would be preferable, we understand that many people simply won't know enough to ask something that narrow.
This also, of course, is a reflection not just of pre-knowledge that users often have in forming their questions, but the false-expectations people have about what is available, source wise, the further back we go. Many people assume we have much more quantitative information about the pre-modern world than we really do, which means that some leeway is necessary simply to give such questions a chance at all. For example, some arcane piece of knowledge from Medieval Europe might be entirely based on an 11th c. document from a monastery in Lombardy. But if a user knew that, they likely wouldn't be asking the question, so asking about the phenomenon "in the Middle Ages" is allowable, while we might not allow the same question is asked about "the Modern era".
In the end, it is important to remember that as questions come from laypeople, the terminology that they use is going to reflect a lay-understanding, and we do our best to accommodate that.
People have strong opinions about questions asked his way, and certainly a vocal minority think they are "dumb", but the simplest answer is that about as many people love them, and most people don't care. We have no plans to ban them. If you aren't a fan, feel free to ignore them. Nine times out of ten, the question makes perfect sense without the affectation and you obviously don't need to answer it in the 2nd person, so they can be treated normally. Please don't report them simply because you think they are "dumb". It is just some curious soul trying to learn more about the world.
That said, we do have an exception to this which is informally known as the "I am a rapist" rule. Most questions in this format are lighthearted, but there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to be using this format to ask from the perspective of someone doing bad things. Questions which use this format to ask about sexual violence, genocide, enslavement, and other, similarly offensive topics will be immediately removed in the interests of good taste and respect for basic human decency.
In the end, all of this comes down to basic respect. People come to /r/AskHistorians because they want to learn, not because they want to be chided for never having learned. Even the most oddly-premised question will in most cases be one asked in good faith, from someone who simply doesn't know enough to ask the question you wish they did, and we prefer to see them treated like a member of the lucky 10,000 than ignored or ill-treated for it.
I just want to elaborate a ittle bit on this by drawing attention to the fact that asking good questions is, in fact, a skill in itself - and often one of the hardest skills for would-be historians to learn. If you study history at the undergraduate level in a country like the UK where our degrees are ultra-specialised (such that a History degree is just a degree in History, not a major in History), many people will tell you that the most nerve-wracking part of the three year programme is the pressure to come up with an original research question for your final year dissertation (thesis).
If you're fortunate enough to have the knowledge and the skills to make regular contributions here answering questions, then your standard for what a good question looks like and what an obvious answer might be is going to be different to the average user, especially in your field. There's an old adage in academia and especially in History that's very relevant here: you don't know what you don't know. Just because a question seems basic or rooted in a misunderstanding of the subject doesn't mean the person asking it is going to lack an interest in a more detailed, in-depth exploration of the subject; it just means they don't have the knowledge themselves to ask those more detailed questions about that subject.
The challenge for us as people answering questions is to learn to unpick what exactly it is a user is asking about, and to give them the answer that best reflects both the expert consensus on the subject and what they want to learn about it. The vast majority of my answers begin by addressing a misconception or giving a short direct answer to the original question-as-phrased, before pivoting to a question that's largely the same but lets me address the real issue OP is talking about but doesn't have the knowledge to identify and articulate interest in. It's very, very rare I get an response to the effect of "but this isn't what I asked!", even when I need to talk about something totally different for a while before I get to what OP cared most about. Writing a good answer is about meeting the other person where they're at, not where you think they should be, and taking them on a journey with you to get where they want to be.
And it's crucial to remember that, although historians by nature of what we do tend to also know quite a bit about other things that overlap with our areas of historical interest - some of our military history folk are engineers for example, and some of our social historians are social scientists as well, etc. - we aren't experts in everything, and we all, no matter how hard we have worked as individuals, are fortunate to have the expertise we do have. The person asking what you might think is a silly, obvious-to-answer question about the past might be a nuclear physicist for all you know. Conversely for readers, the person answering the question may well be the last person in the world your life experiences would lead you to think could be an expert in the field you're interested in. Treat those asking questions the way that you would want to be treated if you were coming to them for knowledge, and treat those answering them as you would want to be treated if you had taken the time out of your day to teach them something for free.
I'll finish by offering a personal illustration of why this is important. I have been flattered and moved beyond belief by the many messages I've had over the years from people who've gone out of their way to tell me what impact my writing has had on them. But I am a specialist in a very specific kind of history. I did not do very well in school, I am not a natural lover of books or libraries, and I crashed out of university the first time I went. I was very, very lucky to get to study almost exclusively my particular interests on my second go at undergraduate study and to benefit from mentoring by an academic who had a genuine passion for teaching, not just research, and who pushed me towards further study and research. The vast majority of questions asked here I don't know the first thing about, either, including many that I imagine seem basic or flawed to experts in those fields - I just have the historical training that lets me tell when an answer is bad as a moderator, which is not the same thing as wrong. So be mindful that when a question seems daft, silly or stupid to you, if it has been asked in good faith, there is every chance that to someone else in this community you know and respect the question is supremely interesting.
I very much want to echo /u/Sowser and their post, as well as our core message as stated above. I really try to see every question we get as an honest attempt to learn something. Even if it seems like a common, or simple question.
Heck, one of my all time favorite things about AskHistorians is seeing a question I thought I knew everything about, only for an answer to come along that just expands and shows me just how much I didn't know about the situation. How complex and vibrant things are.
Like I've done throughout our Round Table posts here I just want the community to know, we're here to help. If your having trouble phrasing things properly, or don't know how to ask your question in the first place, let us know. We can help not only figure out a way to write a question that abides by the rules, but also works better to attract the attention of one of our experts. I will happily do everything I can to make sure you're one of those lucky 10,000.
So get inspired readers, and get out there and start asking some questions.