This past couple of days has flown in the face of all of that, between the mods 'taking a stand' against hate speech on reddit by symbolically shutting down the sub, to the earlier (admittedly well-written and informative) piece from a historian on the history of police brutality visa-vie African-Americans.

I would disagree. The subreddit has always worked for the inclusion of minority voices - from People of Color to LGBTQ+ to religious and ethnic minorities - to cast a light on the forgotten and often ignored histories of people that too often are overlooked and whose roles in shaping our contemporary world are downplayed.

The mods have actively worked to prevent Holocaust denial from gaining a foothold here, to combat the Lost Cause revisionism of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and other sympathizers, and actively and clearly broadcast that this subreddit is to be both inclusive to all voices and that history is still important today, every day, in our lives.

It is not enough for historians to mindlessly compile heaps of facts and present them to the public. History is a matter of interpretation and presentation, and the need for history shifts with the syntax of the times. The mods have always tuned their efforts to address the needs of the moment - when Covid-19 hit big, they had a pandemic megathread to try and address many questions; when Donald Trump was impeached, they had an impeachment thread.

I do not see the mods as acting inconsistently here. The no-soapboxing rule is there to keep individual users from turning threads into platforms for their views, be they political, theological, or whatever. But the moderators themselves, as a group, have always retained the right and exhibited the will to take an ethical stance on how to present and address historical issues, and to do so in a way that is informative and in keeping with the mission of the subreddit.

Our public mission statement is that:

AskHistorians exists to break down the artificial barriers among historical professionals, grassroots historians, and the public. Thus, while we are neither a political organization nor formally affiliated with academia, our mission includes advocacy in both directions. We promote the benefits of public engagement for professional historians at conferences and through face-to-face and online outreach. We offer suggestions to readers on how they can support the health of the humanities in the public sphere.

Bolded for emphasis. We are advocates for good history, and sometimes history gets political. Many people seek to deny the historical injustices that have been perpetuated for hundreds of years, and continue to impact our lives today, and we consider it our duty as historians to stand up, and educate people on this history. And to be utterly frank, anyone who disagrees with that hasn't been paying much attention here for years. We've always banned users who try to deny that history. We've always been vocal about it. It isn't any different to be stating what that history is than it is to prevent people from denying it in their posts.

There's a reason why the issues of today affect us here and now, and to understand the history of what happened and how we got here is crucial towards being better than those that came before us.

I'll go out on a limb to say that discussing the system of injustice and discrimination against minorities for hundreds of years is not standing on a soapbox, it's education. It's real, it happened, and warrants bringing to light as centuries of discrimination have actively contributed to the events of today. To completely divorce history from politics or today's sociology would be ill-advised or even harmful to me, as our history properly contextualizes and interprets how the events of today came to be.

I don’t see how the post by /u/sunagainstgold breaks the 20 year rule. It is a post about the history of police brutality, which stretches back more than a hundred years (that’s kind of the point). Just because it was inspired by recent events does not mean that it breaks the 20 year rule, any more than posts about past plagues broke the rule because they were inspired by the current pandemic, or posts about medieval warfare broke the rule because they were inspired by the latest Game of Thrones episode.

Going “dark” as a protest is a different matter. But it clearly does not break any of the mod-enforced rules either: it is not a post to the sub-reddit but rather a “meta” action. It is a political action, but it is entirely in keeping with all the past political and “meta” actions that the mods have taken.

We have commented on politics before, for example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/60gpc3/update_the_trump_administration_and_the_national/

and

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5r1dlk/the_trump_administration_and_the_national/

We reserve the right to do so when the situation demands it. The death of George Floyd is only the latest example of mob violence directed against people of color in America, whether fomented by police or civilians, and the history of that is well within our baliwick. For an early example, consult Genesis 4:10.

I really like the way this sub frames modern issues into the historical context whenever relevant. As purely an observer with only a passing interest in history, it helps me connect with stories from history that I may have passed up but for the connection to current events.

I am very interested in the Spanish Flu today in a way I would have found laughable 6 months ago. I think of this sub as curated history for the novice and using a modern lens to view it is helpful, for me, and also broadens my palette for new crevices of history.

I'm not sure if I can accept that the desire to not discuss current events is a good faith argument from someone with your screen name, OP.

OP, perhaps you might be more comfortable with the mod's actions if you considered the net effect of those actions. Which would you prefer: a sub filled with a deluge of repetitive, politically-driven questions and an endless policing of those threads by increasingly exhausted, frustrated and eventually unprofessional mods or a brief symbolic act and a single mod post as a focus for all that activity? While I am 100% in agreement with the goals and actions of BLM, I hope that r/askhistorians can continue to cover the full range of historical topics that have made it such an enjoyable read. From that perspective, I believe the mods' actions were well chosen.

There is always the option of starting r/askhistorians2 if you are strongly offended. (Alternatively, you could apply to take over r/askhistoriansGW since that sub, sadly or not, seems to have been completely inactive for the last five years!)

Forgive my needling, and the brevity of my point which undoubtedly aggrandizes my post to the removal powers that be, but without undue hostility my question is pretty simple.

The mods did just make an official, meta-flagged post as a platform to present their official position on a political 'hot topic' to the sub. Isn't this, by definition, soapboxing? And if so, why is this more acceptable? No other such post would be allowed, especially without its necessary partner of a history question being asked first.