I remember you talking about this during a lecture at the university! You were a great professor and helped and inspired me to pursue an info sci career after graduating!
I would just like to contribute that the mod team has my undying respect and gratitude. Reading this sub over several years has not only furthered my knowledge in several subject areas but has helped me, an untrained and amateur enthusiast, develop research skills and a desire for truth that I otherwise would not have come by. Taking the lead from professionals and others like myself who comment here has been integral to helping me not only develop the knowledge base and research skills to answer questions here, but also the confidence to do so and to go further in my studies. None of this would be possible without the moderation of the sub, which is exemplary. So to all of you I say thank you, and want you to know that my experience here has had a serious and positive effect on my life.
No one would have believed in the first years of the twenty-first century that this subreddit was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than their's and yet as mortal as their own; that as historians busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a person with a JSTOR subscription might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of history...
I really like how prominent the quote about reddit being a cesspool is. It's good to make that clear to non-users early and often.
/u/SarahAGilbert continues to put that "Quality" into Quality Contributor.
Fantastic paper, and I'm looking forward to sitting down for a good, in depth read!
CSCW_Paper_Final_Final
Wonderful deep dive into the culture of this community! Thank you for your work.
I was most struck by the discussion of the empathy gap between both those posing questions and the subject of those questions, as well as the gap between moderators/flairs and users. Several years ago I responded to a question about pre-Columbian warfare in North America, and briefly mentioned skeletal evidence of a massacre in what is now South Dakota. For bioarchaeologists reconstructing a life from skeletal remains, including evidence of trauma, can become deeply intimate. You are telling this individual's story to the best of your ability, and combine those stories together to deepen our understanding of the past. We take this role very seriously, and with deep respect, as we try to breathe life into dry bones. I was shocked when a user requested I detail the specifics of how every man, woman, and child was brutally executed and left abandoned on the high plains. I could not comprehend the lack of empathy, and I found myself needing to step back and take a break from writing answers for a few days. This need to take a brief break is a fairly regular occurrence for most flaired users, and the burn out from serving as a moderator, or an active flair, is a very real component of our engagement with this site. Thank you for pulling the curtain back on the mental and emotional work of our methods of public history.
"In both the censusdistributed by moderators and in my interviews with non-moderators, r/AskHistorians moderationstyle was widely supported. In the census 91.6% respondents believed the moderators’ efforts werejust about right. The general consensus that r/AskHistorians’ rules support its mission is likely acontributing factor to its growth [38]."
Could it be the case that those put off by the moderating style (lets assume with legitimate non-hateful reasons) have already stopped subscribing and won't be reflected in this polling?
Holy shit. I already thought of the AH mods as The Best People on the Internet™, and now I believe that 10,000% more than I did before. This paper is incredible, and incredibly important.
Thanks so much for a great paper u/SarahAGilbert, thank you AH mods, and a special thank you to our lady mods, Sarah, u/mimicofmodes, u/sunagainstgold, and our other less visible women.
I really enjoyed the paper. Thank you for writing it and making it available to us. As someone who has written frequently about the plight of Native Americans on this forum and others, I can relate to the "empathy gap".
Capital! Congratulations on getting it out in print!
Looking forward to sitting down with this!
The original reddit thread that this paper examined is found here:
The subreddit that was too good for Reddit. It's a great reality check in terms of expertise, and how the Internet prompts us all to act as one simply because you can.
DOI:10.1145/3392822
For your notation needs.
Umm ackshully... there are 1.2 million subscribers to AskHistorians, not 500 thousand, so this paper is WRONG and USELESS
Fr fr congratulations guys! This was an amazing read and I'm so glad that this sub has gotten to where it is. Keep it up, your efforts mean a lot to us!
r/AskHistorians is a well-run and extremely informative resource about topics I could never even think of when I am just looking to learn more about history for the fun of it. Thanks for the excellent work!
Chiming in with the other comments, I am predominantly a lurker but I absolutely adore this subreddit and the moderation style. I have an undergraduate in History and have moved on to work in Local Government, places such as r/askhistorians allow me to continue to indulge in my interest and passion for history for free, in an easy and accessible quality-assured way; I regularly check this subreddit during my lunchbreak at work. This paper reminds us of the often invisible work you do. So, thank you mods. I am deeply sorry for the abuse and hate you receive, I admire your courage and dedication to deal with it daily.
EDIT: spelling
On my phone now, so I am unable to check it: did you publish this as a historical paper or as an ethnological/anthropology paper? I am sure both would fit, but I'm really curious, as the abstract reads like something that would fit one of my studies (german: Volkskunde/Europäische Ethnologie, roughly similar to cultural anthropology, but really something that is kinda limited to german speaking universities) really well and I shall try to find a way to use it somehow in my course papers.
I've always had the highest respect for the mods here, having to closely monitor comments to keep the quality of the subreddit at the high level it exists at.
I never really thought about the hate messages you all must get because of it. I naively assumed people would understand this sub requires answers to be scholarly in nature and either stop responding when they couldn't meet the standards or up their game and have higher quality answers.
It never crossed my mind that quality moderation would be met with such vile responses.
In six years I have never made a comment over ten words. Hopefully this makes it more meaningful when I say thank you to the moderators of this sub. I've only skimmed a bit of the article so far, but I have the utmost respect for what you have and will accomplish here in the face of harassment and hate and ignorance (all unseen thanks to your diligence). You're champions, the lot of you.
This was a really interesting paper--and also a great 'behind the scenes' peek for a sometimes-contributor.
(and as a bonus, I also learned some things about my favorite mods, too...!)
Really nice work.
In the big picture: as a professor, I often am in despair about the state of historical information (vis-a-vis misinformation) circulating on the internet, but r/askHistorians always brings me back off of the ledge.
Interesting paper. Mahalo for providing a pre-print, /u/SarahAGilbert.
I've always thought the subject of internet moderation required a lot more scholarship than was given. A volunteer shoulders the same workload and the same stress as a paid employee. It takes a toll on everyone who does it long enough.
Thank you for writing this. I’ve been going on this subreddit for about 7 years and it has always been one of the greatest sources of learning I’ve found, thanks to the hard work of the moderators. Even when I took a break from reddit for ~3 years, I never stopped coming here. The work the moderators do is so appreciated by all of the invisible people like me who love to learn more but don’t have the expertise to answer. Keep up the great work!!
Awesome, I’ve been longing for a more academic piece on askhistorians to be able to assign my students!
Great article. Although reading the examples of the abuse moderators received from strangers for no reason was pretty disheartening.
Are you guys crying or is it just me 😪
Can you tell us about the things you've learned in the time you've been a moderator, that you feel are not reflected in the paper?
You guys are amazing
This has consistently been the highest quality sub on my feed. Thanks to everyone involved!
Cesspool of a website seems a little harsh.
Thank you, this was interesting and I will read it more closely later. :) And thank you to all the mods and contributors here! I will have to agree with the lurker that said it is great to see informative comments and not a mass of Alexander the Great puns... or worse.
Browsing this sub is one of my favorite things to do on reddit. Thanks :)
Christ, I never realized that you all put that much effort into answers for what is essentially 0 value reward outside of your enjoyment. Entire days of research? Biking to libraries for sources? You all ought to publish a History FAQ book.
Edit: sorry, value was the wrong word. There's plenty of value in what you create, and in an open forum of discussion. It's just a brutal thankless job the mods choose to do, for such little reward, and it's rather shocking to me.
I once tried to start a discord server for "serious discussion" of just about anything. It never had more than 70 members, and ultimately failed for many reasons. I also run multiple other more casual servers in the 1k to 5k range, and I have nothing but respect for the folks who run this sub. A damn thankless job it is sometimes, and here it's probably harder in ways I can't even imagine.
That was pretty great! It also reminded me that we don't often post a great deal about some of the questions about other parts of the world that aren't American or European. I personally had already been interested in the extent and reach of the Aksum empire specifically since it seemed to be a prominent trade partner with regards to the Eastern Roman Empire, and I wondered if it was made more prosperous or pushed aside by the silk road. Maybe I'll try to find a way to ask a good question about it here...
I've never been so proud of a corner of the internet as much as I am seeing this post and this thread :D thank you u/SarahAGilbert and the rest of the mod team!
This really is the greatest sub on Reddit. And a good example of "the tragedy of the commons" when compared with other subs that take a different approach.
It's a great resource, and without such stalwart management it's usefulness would have been depleted years ago.
You are doing exactly what needs to be done. Imagine what this sub would be without it.
Also, I'm hoping I unlock an achievement for leaving a comment here ;)
This is a very well written paper. Although some of the examples featured are very specific to /r/AskHistorians, it raises many good points about moderation as a whole, particularly sections 2.1, 4.2.2, 5.2 and 5.3. Despite this, I really enjoyed reading about moderation on another subreddit, especially one with a niche purpose like this one.
Thanks for writing it!
I'd just like to express my gratitude to how this forum space is run. The resources and FAQs section (especially the one on maps) are all amazing. Thank you all for your hard work, it is greatly appreciated.
Also, that is one hell of a title for an academic paper!
This is an awesome idea for an article! Great job!
This sub is phenomenal due to the detailed contributions and the tireless work of the moderators to ensure that we receive quality content.
It's a great paper and it makes me really want to teach a class for history majors that uses r/AskHistorians as a central focal point. But the paper also does something even more important, which is to document how pervasive and intense the "hidden discourse" of online culture really is. The people who own or control social media platforms continue to want to deny or underrate what anyone who spends time in them knows very well--especially any women or people identified as people of color or as LGBT people. Which is that there are not only many participants in social media who think nothing of sending death threats, rape threats, ugly thoughts or just expressing rage and self-entitlement to anyone who moderates their posts or simply says something they disagree with, but that some of these participants spend a large proportion of their waking days sending hundreds of these kinds of messages across the breadth of a given social media platform (or many of them) and who work hard to evade any consequences--creating new accounts, burner accounts, spoofed IPs and so on so that they can come right back and do it again. The goal in many cases is not only to frighten and hurt people they hate and to make their own thoughts dominant, it is also simply to wear everyone down and make them relent in any rules or moderation at all.
The best place on reddit and a huge part of that is the mod team. A+
Bruh
This is cool af
Also, this subreddit makes me realize how damn smart some of you guys are.
I know that whenever I browse through this sub I'm gonna learn something new and valuable . I feel no anxiety coming to this sub. There's no drama, no bullying, no hivemind. This feels like on of the safest spaces on the entire reddit.
With a certain other subreddit Mods removing comments and posts for “reasons”, it is good to remember what the r/AskHistorians mods do.
This was so interesting! Thanks for linking the article. It was an eye opening read. I’m so thankful for the mods here and sorry for the negativity that you experience.
Just want to say, y'all are awesome and please keep doing what you do.
Moderators. You do such excellent work putting absolute geniuses on a pedastal and have changed history in that regard. Keep on keeping on!
Wish I could access it :(. It’s sounds like it would be fascinating
Cool! I've added to the coming semester's curriculum (on digtital history) - looking forward to hearing what the students think.
Hands down the best sub on the site. I look forward to reading your paper later.
Keep up the amazing work mods
I had zero idea about the invisible work that moderators do. I'm grateful to know about it now.
Talking about the bias and American centric questions, I remember a very innocent question about the use of salt and pepper in American cosine . It seems like the OP thought only in the US pepper and salt were being used and that it was the result of an advertisement campaign. However, as always someone gave a comprehensive answer which show the OP that those 2 ingredients have been used for a long time.
This is awesome! Congrats to all.
I love that this is an excuse for the mods to just go nuts and have fun!
This was a fascinating read. I've been a member here for many years and take great pleasure in reading the superb insight provided and also glad that content which holds no merit is removed.
Thank you for linking the paper! I didn't realize the lengths people go to for their answers; the anecdote about biking to the library particularly struck me. I also really appreciate those who specialize in less popular topics and still hang around.
And thank you again to the moderators! This is my favorite subreddit and I learn something new everytime I visit.
New to Reddit, but I’ve already seen more on Reddit than I needed to—and as a more serious-minded person (AND history junkie), it didn’t take long to figure out the Good Stuff from the drivel. This sub is by far The Best Stuff. I commend you and I am always RECOMMENDING you!!
Wow! I will read it very soon but must say a . historical romance dramatic book cover seems in order lol
I look forward to citing you someday.
I find the lack of “20 year rule” jokes disappointing. But in all seriousness, this looks very interesting. Thank you for your contribution!
Wait, one of you guys has a JD? seriously?
Would it be fair to say the r/AskHistorian's moderation team is by and large politically oriented against Reddit? There have been several recent occasions where the moderation team has made it's distaste for decisions by the reddit admins quite known, and this article is fairly critical of the reddit user base, even if we limit it just to r/AskHistorian subscribers who ask questions in good faith.
I'm going to throw a crazy idea out there, recognizing well in advance it may be a terrible idea. But here we go:
Has anybody thought about/explored the idea of moving AskHistorians off reddit and onto a separate forum? Perhaps one that would not necessarily need to conform the the norms and expectations of other subreddits (e.g. free-for-all answers, lax moderation, etc.).
Obviously reddit provides advantages in terms of visibility and notoriety (for better and worse), but I can't help but think with the right strategy, we could move this community to its own platform, that may be able to better suit its mission.
I didn't expect to laugh so hard while reading this, but
"It’s perfectly normal for me to see people denying the Holocaust on a daily basis, because why wouldn’t you, right?
Really got me. This sentence alone sums up the insane world you mods live in. Thank you for curating this wonderful sub.
Holy smokes
For those of you who'd like to read the paper, but don't have access to the ACM Digital Library, you can read a pre-print here.
wow, I had no idea how much redditors chafe at any kind of censorship. you mods rock, thanks!
Interesting article u/SarahAGilbert, but I was surprised to read that Reddit has a "largely white and masculine culture". Do you know the reason of that?
Or should I open a new question for that?
Thank you beforehand.
The default masculine whiteness
Good signal for what the paper will be about
Why did you make race an issue in this argument of yours? Also mods do cencor content exspecaliy when it opposes there political opinion
“I run the world’s largest historical outreach project and it’s on a cesspool of a website.” Moderating a public scholarship site on Reddit: A case study of r/AskHistorians
As the author said, if reddit is a “cesspool”, she’s part of that cesspool. Personally, I think there is a lot more nuance in individuals and groups than that.
This subreddit is atypical of reddit, because rather than using user votes to cull content, content is culled by a small group of prominent members. If you have the knowledge, expertise, and sources to validate your statements, they are allowed. This makes the responses highly editorialized, but that’s by design.
Having an insular group of academics cull published content is not new, in fact its the normal for much of the real world, it’s only unique on reddit. This is touched on. However, the exact manner in which academic discussion is editorialized has always been a controversial subject.
The paper focus on a very narrow topic in a very unique subreddit, and attempts to extrapolate and interpret that in reference to the wider reddit website, but does so without a similar wide examination of the discussions taking place on reddit outside this forum. The author attempts to address this, but always through the insular lens of a moderator. This is acknowledged, but the lack of greater perspective limits and ultimately undermines the titular premise.
The author touches on how the design of reddit can cause incorrect information to be elevated to a position of prominence, which causes a perception of truth or accuracy. There are reasons given for that, but one of the reasons missed is familiarity. Users upvote not just what they perceive as high quality or accurate, but what is familiar.
You can see this inscribed in the rules of /r/Art, a community with over 18 million members. Rule 7. No fan art.
- No fan art, comics, or requests for work.
It's a Reddit thing, not an Art thing, and the main reason we have the rule is because it unbalances the sub. As a "default" /r/Art is seen by all of Reddit, not just the subscribers. The average Redditor upvotes something familiar much more than something that is quality. Fan art receives upvotes because people like the subject, so much so that other works of art get pushed off of the front page. Without the restriction, often more than half the top posts were fan art.
Another aspect not addressed is the flawed methods of using engagement, such as comments or votes, as a measurement of the culture and opinions of the greater community. A common sentiment expressed by reddit staff admins and reddit volunteer moderators is that the users who submit content, the users who upvote content, the users who comment, are all different groups. The majority of reddit users are passive, and rarely participate. Using narrow selections of a population is not descriptive of the population as a whole. “The squeaky wheel gets the oil.”
The voting system itself, karma, is a numerical system interpreted in different ways. The software interprets it to elevate and cull content, but that is not how all the users interpret it or use it. The average number of upvotes and the average number of downvoted differ by orders of magnitude. Even when users disagree with content, find it poor quality, or incorrect, they do not downvote with the same frequency they upvote. The official site wide rules specifically instruct users not to use votes this way. This “positivity bias” is partially why you often have seemingly competing or contradictory content in close proximity on the website. Similarly, when users disagree with something, they do not always comment against it. Many users when faced with confrontation will choose to not engage, even if that means their viewpoint is ultimately not expressed and accurately accounted for. Conversely, if they find a space where they can find agreeable content, they may be more likely to engage. This is part of what makes the divisive nature of subreddits a positive thing for fostering discussion and expression
Ultimately, strong moderation benefits the /r/AskHistorians subreddit. The arguments that it fosters trust and elevates accurate information through academic review is a strong argument, and reflected in many other forums, particularly those outside of the internet. However reddit itself is not an academic forum. It’s 20 million registered members are not all academics, it’s 100 million viewers are not all academics. The article fails to establish these millions as a “cesspool”, and does not really attempt to do so, except through its title and the niche perspectives of this subreddit through selected negative content.
The paper addresses factual information and culture, but they are not the same and they are not directly reflective of each. The author touches on culture, but doesn’t attribute where specific cultures come from, how cultures are established, and how they change. When contextualizing the narrow perspective through moderating this subreddit, the author fails to establish culture of the larger reddit population. Another factor, relevant to many users outside of this subreddit, is using those same moderation techniques on large populations, which is not addressed.
TL;DR: Don't remove answers unless you have a better one.
There was a question about Rod Stewart's success. I researched it and gave a factual answer. It was removed and there was never an answer. Mind you there is no modern day rock historian or if you follow music, you can be one.
I usually PM the OP because I know they probably will remove my factual post. Sure, not every answer is correct or even factual, but judge the answers on their merits instead of just removing them automatically.
Did I read this correctly? “Masculine whiteness”? Really?
Results show that visible moderation work that is often interpreted as censorship, and the default masculine whiteness of Reddit create challenges for moderators who use the subreddit as a public history site.
Wow, thats a very interesting thing to say.
I enjoyed it, but using masculine whiteness purely as a derogatory term is pretty insulting to me since they describe me personally. I understand I have some innate privilege in the wider world, although academically it was a hindrance based on my area of study.
I can't say I'm a huge fan of my biological adjectives being turned into derogatory insults. Especially when used nebulously to describe an inanimate object, if there was any way to read the sentence in which it appeared as anything other than a direct insult I wouldn't have minded, but based on the context, and the use, it paints one of my favorite subs as antagonistic. This is despite defending and appreciating the moderation any time it comes up. Perhaps using privilege instead of unchangeable biological traits would have been a more inclusive way to start the paper.
Doesnt matter what subreddit, mods jizz their pants whenever they remove a post.