I also see a number of answers that have some value just wiped from existence.

Answers aren't answers just because they're correct; those that survive are the ones that explain. I mean, I could simply point out that Medieval people did drink water and the question is ill-founded, but that doesn't explain why and leaves the poster unsatisfied. Thus, a fuller answer is necessary for that explanation, per Rule 4: in-depth and comprehensive. It is not enough for me to simply say that Medieval aqueducts existed - I should also speak of how they were used, why, and otherwise explain why and how they relate to the question asked.

It's an tenet of the sub that no answer is better than a bad answer. As my flair means I deal with a lot of the commonly-repeated stuff people pick up from bad learning, I agree most firmly.

And the vast majority of deleted comments are just plain clutter anyway. You see it happen everywhere else on reddit: some random low-effort meme banged out in five seconds gets upvoted to the top, and attracts more low-effort meme responses, and I also choose this guy's wife, and thanks to that, the serious efforts go unnoticed. How do you think the user feels who delved through four books to make sure of their answer when they get three upvotes, while the useless clutter gets a thousand? We're here for history, not memery. (Unless it's 1 April or someone posts a meta thread, in which case all bets are off.) For a little picture of what most deleted comments are like, this post has Zhukov showing some of the lowlights.

By summarily removing threads that do not meet your standards it limits the ability of future historians from understanding the sentiments and understanding of the current time.

Eh, disagree here. Removed questions are because they can't satisfactorily be answered to subreddit standards. Not much point in a trivia thread. What-if questions are basically just an excuse to write fiction. And this ain't a sub to ask to do your homework. For removed replies, see above.

Besides, there's the entire rest of reddit if future historians really want to dig into this soulless pit for the sentiments and understanding of the current time, as well as any of a dozen other websites, media outlets, and other channels people can express themselves. 90% of the removed comments aren't great losses anyway, and I'm sure future historians will be very interested in what Racist Bastard #1298434 wrote about the mods being dictatorial socialist fascist lizardpeople.

I am here to say that whether you like it or not this subreddit has become a hub for popular history.
Id suggest that you have succeeded in providing a platform where historical inquiry can take place.

I submit that we've got where we are precisely because of the strict moderation. Someone can come here and trust that they're not just getting an answer from the College Of What Some Bloke In The Pub Said That Sounds Vaguely Right, and that they don't have to wade through a dozen threads of clutter and memery to do it.

In so doing you have attracted the people you don't want to deal with(ie blue collar rubes).

Eh, I'm fine with dealing with blue collar rubes. Ignorance can be fixed, and someone coming here with an honest question is seeking to improve their knowledge, which none of us will ever spurn. As long as every visitor follows the rules, we'll be fine.

instead of just wielding the stick think about having another subreddit. where you publish certified askhistorian quality posts.

For already-written content, I refer you to the third bullet in the AutoMod autopost of this thread, or indeed, just to the AutoMod autopost on every thread. We know about how the browsing experience can be, which is why we've set AutoMod (may its circuits run forever swift!) with the appropriate information.

idk i just feel like there might be a better way. tbh this is reddit not a peer reviewed journal. trying to force the same standards is fruitless and frustrating for everyone involved.

And all the better news for me - I'm no academic (hell, I never even finished uni!) and I don't even know how to cite, all I do is Bookname, Authorname in bullets at the end. All subreddits enforce a particular culture; ours simply happens to be fairly different to the rest of reddit. Yet, to blatantly steal a turn of phrase from The Mods: Would you walk into a fine dining restaurant and complain about the lack of chicken nuggets, when there's a chicken nuggets place right next door? As pointed out, r/history and r/askhistory are just round the corner if you prefer looser moderation.

There already are multiple subs like you want, such as r/history. Maybe you should check it out and leave this group to do as it does.

By summarily removing threads that do not meet your standards it limits the ability of future historians from understanding the sentiments and understanding of the current time.

I see u/DanKensington has engaged more fully with all of your points here, and others on the modteam may also choose to do so. I wanted to engage with this one because it's an interesting perspective that - in my experience at least - hasn't been suggested in a similar thread before. It gets at very big issues about digital primary source material, how it is created and who owns/controls it.

In this case, I'm not sure I see an overwhelming rationale for changing our approach for the benefit of hypothetical future historians. For one, there are plenty of un- or less-moderated history forums on the internet in general, and Reddit specifically, that would presumably provide an alternative source base (and so makes the potential benefit of completely changing our approach minimal at best in this area). In fact, I'd argue that the distinctiveness of our approach here would make it more valuable as a primary source base - it provides a point of comparison to other sets of data, and evidence regarding the impact of different posting cultures and rules have on the way that history is written and consumed online. Our sub has already been used as a case study in academic work exploring the nature of moderation on reddit and beyond, so I suspect future historians (if they are interested in such questions) will continue to find the traces we leave behind useful.

I hope this doesn't feel like piling on, but I did want to share my perspective as someone who has, and continues to research the community. I'm not an historian, but am interested in the sub (and reddit) as a source of, as you put it, "understanding the sentiments and understanding of the current time."

Like /u/crrpit said, that r/AskHistorians is unique is one of the reasons why I was interested in the sub; although truth be told, when I first started studying AskHistorians I didn't have a clear sense of how important that would be to my research (I mostly picked it because I wanted a learning-centric community and it was already one of my favorites, having been a lurker here since 2012). But the moderation on AskHistorians, how it differs from the rest of reddit and the effect that has, ended up being the biggest factor in my research. You can read a pre-print of a paper I published earlier this year about moderating the sub; while the focus is on moderation labour, I also touch on how important that labour is for flairs (who don't want to take the time to write out a long response that will just get buried) and readers (who don't want to wade through mounds of comments to find good ones and who see the content that remains as trustworthy). In other words: the rules and their enforcement are key motivators for those providing answers, and those reading them. I've actually learned a lot from removed comments. I wasn't a mod when I researched and wrote that paper and having access to the removed comments in the thread that runs through the paper was eye opening. However, what I learned had nothing to do with history and everything to do with reddit's culture and, in a minority of cases, its capacity for cruelty. Finally, it's not just me who's been interested in AskHistorians' unique moderation style: this study, by my friend and colleague Dr. Chandrasekharan, used /r/AskHistorians as an example of a well moderated community to train an algorithm to identify abusive behaviour.

And perhaps to ease your mind about about the historical record: it exists! Reddit has an open API which means that anyone with the know-how can use a python script to scrape the data themselves, or barring that, can use an existing dataset. Moderators can only remove comments from view, they can't delete them. That means that mod removed aren't wiped from history (the same as if a user or an admin deleted comments). Removed comments have been the subject of academic study as well (again, by my friend Dr. Chandrasekharan).

tbh this is reddit not a peer reviewed journal. trying to force the same standards is fruitless and frustrating for everyone involved.

The standards for an answer to stand here without deletion are far lower than the standards for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The majority of my peer-reviewed publications are in a field other than history, with IMO a smaller MPU (minimum publishable unit) than history. Leaving aside quality of writing, referencing, lit review, and methodology, and just looking at the intellectual contribution to the field, the intellectual contribution of an answer here is typically far short of an MPU in my field, and also in history. This is not just due to the average acceptable answer here being far shorter than a typical peer-reviewed paper - it's due to the difference in purpose. The function of peer-reviewed journals is to communicate intellectual contributions to the field. The function of answers here is public education. Just as a school textbook doesn't need to make a new intellectual contribution to the field, an answer here doesn't need to. Given this difference in purpose, there is a deep difference in standards between here and a peer-reviewed journal. There are also big differences in required references, length, etc.

As a contributor, I don't find the standards required for my contributions to be frustrating. If one of my answers is removed, and my time, knowledge, and sources allow, I have the option of revising my answer and trying again. If I put significant effort into my answer in the first place, it should be possible to improve it sufficiently to be acceptable, and that original effort will not be wasted. Nobody forces me to contribute here. If I found it frustrating, I wouldn't do it. If I preferred to post low-effort answers to history questions, there are other subs out there where I could do so. That I post here more often than on those other subs is because I prefer to post here. Rather than the standards being frustrating, I find the standards encouraging.

"Understanding the sentiments and understanding of the current time" is not a stated objective of this subreddit (unless it links directly to in-depth understanding of a topic).

If you don't want to click through nuked threads, try following r/HistoriansAnswered instead, which will link only to answered r/AskHistorians post.