No, it's not a common way to frame questions in the US (outside of Reddit at least).

One thing I'll say is that asking questions on this sub in a way that gets enough attention to both keep from falling into the void and also to get a quality answer is something of an art. It's why there's a whole flair just for that, I guess.

People tend to copy what works. This style of question isn't so big any more but was kind of a fad a few years ago ("I'm a hot blooded young x"), that kind of stuck around as a joke and because they got attention. People copy what works, even if it's a little tongue in cheek. I myself am guilty of this, but then again that's also my most-upvoted question on this sub that also got a very detailed answer.

It's very hit or miss what catches, and given that people are answering for free with limited time, only a minority of questions will get answered, so it's not too surprising that people copy styles of other questions that get upvotes and also get answers.

Something I would add in addition to what /u/mimicofmodes noted is that some people really don't like this formulation of a question (There is always calls for us to disallow them, which we ignore. There are also users who will insult the asker in replies, which we ban for). But they are a small, vocal minority. There is also a subset of users who really like them. They too are a minority, although only will usually come out of the woodwork in response to people saying they hate the style. Most users... don't care one way or the other.

This is something we have surveyed a few times, including specifically with our flaired users, and even in the flaired ranks the breakdown is similar with roughly equal numbers in the 'love it' and 'hate it' ranks and the majority indifferent, and while we've never formally surveyed ourselves, I'd say even the mods break down similarly.

If I'm being honest, on a personal note, I started as indifferent, but if anything, the absolutely bizarre hatred it brings out in some people if anything has made me more of a fan of them, since I just do not get why it puts some people into such a tizzy. As most of the people who fall into that indifferent middle note in feedback, it doesn't really matter much, and if you don't want to read the question in first person, it is almost always elementary to rephrase it in your mind as a third person and just ignore the format.

I've also though, in hearing from the people who like it, come to appreciate it a bit more over time, and I do think that it is a useful 'crutch' for people to ask questions, and think about how to ask questions, that actually get to the experience of people in the past. Asking good questions is actually a tough thing to do. It takes practice, and background knowledge that people. Sure, they will often have some odd premise baked in to them, but plenty of non-first person questions do too so that is hardly a fatal flaw. So I'm going to be a fan of anything that helps people articulate their question better.

I would add one final note though, namely that while we don't (and won't) ban them, we do regulate them under our rules concerning good taste. It isn't that we have topics which are off limits, but there are questions we expect to be asked with a certain level of respect, and first person questions fall into that orbit. That is to say, don't use the first person to ask about the attitudes of enslavers in the American South ("I am a Southern slave owner, do I consider my slaves to be human?", or to ask about the Holocaust ("I am a member of the Einsatzgruppen, what motivations do I have to murder Jews?"). The format is rarely necessary for a question, even if it can be helpful, or even enhance it, so when it ends up placing the reader/writer in the proverbial shoes of the historical 'big bads' we are drawing a line there as it just isn't needed, and plainly put, we don't want to see it.

I have had another theory not mentioned in the 28 comments at the time I write this: these questions may come from writers of historical fiction who want to keep their work at least vaguely accurate. If your main character is a milkmaid from Bavaria in 1475, you want to be able to give a vivid picture of her world that is grounded in reality in interesting and unexpected ways. There aren't a lot of widely published works of history that go into details about what that sort of person's life was like (and that applies to almost any "common" person's life).

As I noted to someone else last night, there really aren't that many of these questions - I don't know how anyone gets the sense that there is except that there's an outsized number of complaints about them giving the impression that the sub is dominated by the format. Before the one that was literally posted less than an hour ago, there was another seven hours ago, but before that ... I went back four full days and didn't find any.

People likely do it because they saw another question here that was phrased like that and it stuck in their head, or because they got to the question by putting themselves in a historical person's shoes and wondering what it would have been like to be in that situation.

The history as it was taught to me in school was a collection of kings and battles. Set of dates to remember. Only by a chance I was guided towards source material that dealt with history from a personal perspective. Journals, letters and such. What I wasn't taught was that all those kings and battles are a minuscule part of our history, There will be ten kings in a dynasty, but millions of subjects. Those subjects were the farmers in rural areas, students in cities, or seasonal workers, their perspective is important and I love to see people being interested in it.

my little pet theory is that a lot of would-be writers use this sub for character research

While this is a META, this actually gets into a trend happening in digital humanities. Games are a great way to teach people about the past- while the general public might assume history is about facts and dates, historians care more about understanding and interpreting events. Role playing can help people think about it, and maybe that learning style works better for some people. Others might prefer a traditional lecture or book based learning experience of the past. But given that gaming in many distinct forms is part of mainstream culture, its no wonder people ask questions through their experiences, and there are historians approaching the past in the same manner.

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On the digital games front, how many people here played The Oregon Trail? In elementary school, maybe you didn't realize it was a history teaching tool, but it does teach you something about US westward expansion. The meme "you've died of dysentery" still lives on, and that means people learned about conditions that impacted how families traveled the trail. The game also has it faults, like any piece of scholarship. More recent history centers Indigenous people, and there's now a game for that too if you want to play When Rivers Were Trails. I took a class where the professor had us play both games to think about how history and games teach people about the past and comparing the perspectives presented to the player.

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You can also try text adventure games like The Road to Canterbury. Serena Zabin is working on a Boston Massacre game called Witness to the Revolution. Even Assassin's Creed and DnD come up in discussions about history and games- see the AskHistorians 2021 Digital Conference Panel Players Gonna Play Play Play Play Play to hear more about that. There's also the board game world where The Shores of Tripoli takes place during the First Barbary War, an event in US military history you probably don't hear about that often. A game can be a great starting point to garner interest in a subject and introduce historical ideas.

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People are learning about the past through games and RPGs, and there are historians seeking to provide historical games and context. A lot of people won't pick up an academic history book, but historians can meet students and public audiences in games to teach something and have fun doing it.

I think it’s also a quick way to convey a lot of pertinent information that a layperson (like myself) knows needs to be included to get an accurate answer, without knowing exactly what information needs to be presented to get said answer.

Oh look, a question I can respond to.

I asked a question that way once, and it was because I was (and still am) writing a work of fiction partly set in ancient Rome.

It might be that History, as a subject matter, can seem alien or impersonal. For many who are faced with historical information, many realities of everyday life in a given century, location, time period, etc. are just "weird" and their brains refuse to accept the information within context, so they think people are 'stupid.'

By framing it is a role-play question, it does offer an ability for readers and students to put themselves into that situation. Think of it this way, when someone says "John got robbed last night." That's an abstract. You might not connect with it, might be judgemental (did he call the police? He shouldn't rent in that neighborhood, etc), or you might forget it as soon as you hear it.

But, if I tell you the story of how I heard someone moving around downstairs, how I crept down with a baseball bat while my wife called 911, and so on, this activates our human parasocial response; suddenly YOU are there, baseball bat in hand, and you are more likely to feel connected, less likely to judge, and more likely to remember the incident long after I tell the story.

While it's not an Orthodox method of asking a question in Historical circles, it is nonetheless a valuable pedagogical tool to attach human emotion, empathy, and understanding to what could be (in many cases) a boring, dry recitation of facts (or best available facts).

When I've asked questions on this sub, I don't remember ever putting it in that way, but it narrows it down easily and quickly to let people know what perspective you're looking for.

If I asked the question, "What number/money system was used in Rome after the fall of the Western Empire," that is a fairly broad question that might get a few answers from a few different perspectives. If I said, "As a Goth occupying Rome, what number system would I use for daily life? What kind of money would I have, and how would I manage it?" The question can come from the same place, but it's really quite different now. It's still about numbers, money, and banking in post-fall Rome, but now you're focusing on one perspective and shifting how it's asked. It will likely get different kinds of answers.

In my opinion, neither one is good or bad, neither is better than the other in the absolute sense, but how you phrase a question lets people know how broad or specific and from what viewpoint you'd like an answer.

I bet a lot of writers come here looking for research for novels.

I've thoroughly enjoyed them as they introduce the question as a slice of life story; like the one about being a teenager in Tenochitlan with a bunch of money in his pocket looking for all the wanton things available. They are relatable.

Meta answer: It's a common thing on this sub because it's a common thing on this sub. People see questions like that and copy the format, either because they thought it was a requirement for posting, or because they've seen posts like that be successful.

Personally I'm much more interested in the experiences of ordinary people throughout history than I am in battles, elections and political shenanigans.

I don't care about rich people trying to draw lines on a map, I care about the experiences, feelings and opinions of real people throughout time.

I love those questions. I there any more exciting question in history than "what would feel like be like to be x type of person at x place and time?"

I suspect that it’s because a lot of history typically studied doesn’t give as much insight to the lives of ordinary people. The role play questions are usually interested in what someone’s own day-to-day life would be like, and how it would be different from the contemporary. There are books and movies about that sort of thing, sure, but they’re vastly outnumbered by the ones about big battles, famous figures, and extraordinary events. So I think people gravitate to this sub to fill that unfulfilled desire to understand the common humanity of history.

I’ve asked a few questions like this because I’m a curious person and i think human stories are generally the most important part of history. So framing a question like this humanizes the answers and quickly provides the specifics of what I’m wondering about without having to go into too much detail

You should have asked:

"I'm a Redditor in the 21st Century writing a question on /r/AskHistorians. Why do I write it in this style?"

I think it makes sense that people are interested in specific details about the reality of life for particular types of persons, in particular places, at particular times - it's a level of specificity that you may not easily be able to get from a given publication. Given that premise, saying "I am a farmer in C18th rural Virginia" is really just a variation on "What would daily life be like for a farmer in C18th rural Virginia?"

I like this form of question, as it is a good way to move away from the big picture of reigns, and battles and dates, down to the more personal level of the lives of common people. Many of the answers to this type of question could be on /r/AskSocioogists or /r/Anthropologists i there are such groups.

It also makes a question answerable. If someone asks, "what training did a roman legionaire get" it will be very much a "what era, where abouts" by specifing a century, a place, a background, you make the question answerable. Then the answerer may broaden the topic to show how things changed in different time and place.

My thinking is that a lot of people posting are young, and this is how questions on tests are often written.

As a med student, vignette-style questions are very good at efficiently conveying detailed and specific scenarios without seeming like a list - I see a similar questions but in the third person i.e. "A 58 year old male presents to the clinic complaining of A, B, and C, further questioning reveals D..."

Because of character limits, you can pack a lot more into an "I am" phrasing than you can into a regular "a person who is" style. First person also eliminates awkward pronoun problems with he/she/they because it's all "I".

What I've noticed reading this forum is that many questions simply get more questions, or "it depends." Usually because the question is too broad, covering too much time land or social diversity. It's hard to formulate one of those roleplaying questions without nailing down all of those, and specific questions tend to lead to better answers.

I do it for specificity. If I ask a question about something like castles or knights or whatever the answers might vary based on what time period or region you’re talking about.

As a big fun of these type of questions, I would like to reply this (also I do not want to miss my chance to comment on the sub haha)

In some topics, I do not have much of intellectual curiosity or motivation to learn something (political or cultural), but I just have the raw curiosity. I do not care much the politic/religious/or whatever aspects of things happening in the 1200's Germany, 500's Mexico or China in two millennia ago. Sometimes they sound interesting and I read but not much. On the other hand, what I find marvelous is to learn the daily life of a smith in 1200's Germany or a shaman in 500's Mexico or a farmer in China. That's why these type of questions are the ones I enjoy the most. They trigger the raw curiosity. They are like fascinating stories for me.

Effect of WWII on labour movement in today - Very nice question and I am happy to read everything.

I am a farmer in pre-Rome era of Naples and I want to find a girlfriend at my town? What should I do? - Opens a beer and hope for several long replies.

When I studied history at the uni, “history from below”, micro history, folk history etc. were all the rage, so I admit I’m a bit confused by this thread: do they still mostly teach history in American schools from the “great men” viewpoint, centering “kings and battles”?

For me, this type of question does sound like a historical fiction writer trying to get others do their work for them, for free. From what I understand, historians can get very detailed slice of life (and death) pictures from specific eras and places, they can give great context to what customs the people in question had, what they might have expected from life, etc. - but to me the question of feels is outside the scope. I wonder, can’t people really not relate to life in other times, places, cultures without this very specific framing?

Ive been wondering this for years and could never formulate the question as well as you did, so thank you.

Tell me more about that ah Rome war on Gaul daddy

I think I may be qualified to answer this one. A proportion of such questions will come from writers. We're the ones that need granular details about how people live, and how the transition from one thing to another.

Source: I am a minor professional author who has written Historical Fiction.

I always thought it was people writing historical novels or short stories - they want to know little things their characters would, to make it more authentic

I think another contributing factor is that some askers are trying to write historical fiction or roleplaying games, and want to realistically flesh out some aspect of their world. In that case, they literally are asking about someone specifically in that perspective

I assumed people were either asking for things to write with or got curious because of a video game or book. Maybe trying to sneak around the homework rule

I always have assumed that those people are trying to have a specific part of their essay or other assignments researched for them when they are framed as such.

I always assumed it was in relation to something someone was working on (a piece of fiction like a book or story) and this was a good jumping off point for research or a question they came upon they’ve had difficulty answering

I’ve been on this subreddit for a few years. I have never experienced anything like it in real life or another subreddit.

In a way I like the phrasing of those types of questions. Makes it a bit more personal maybe. Not exactly sure. Glad they are still around though

Narrative history is all over the place outside of purely academic sources.

Because we want to know how life would be like back then.

I am a Redditor in late 2021. Would I perceive a role play element on the subreddit r/AskHistorians? If so, why?

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FTFY :)

It’s not more common in the US than anywhere else unless you’re a historical reenactor, or maybe trying to write a book or practice a writing prompt.

You’re probably thinking that it’s US-based, but I bet $50 it’s Reddit-based. :-)

In Ireland this is a way that some questions are phrased in the exams people do at ~15 years old (junior certificate). I remember I found those more enjoyable to learn and do because you could imagine a story while writing the answer. Some options from the most recent paper:

Select one of the people described below. Write about that person. (i) A native Irish person who lost land during a named plantation in Ireland during the sixteenth or seventeenth century.
(ii) A factory owner or a mine owner during the Industrial Revolution in Britain c. 1850.
(iii) A named leader involved in the struggle for Irish independence, 1916‐1923.

Select one of the people described below. Write about that person. (i) A farmer living in ancient (pre‐Christian) Ireland. (ii) A monk in an early Christian monastery in Ireland. (iii) A named Renaissance writer.

Write an account of two of the following people from the Middle Ages: (a) A serf on a medieval manor. (b) The Lady of a castle and her duties. (c) The training of a medieval craftsman.

I tend to assume that the person asking such a question is:

a) a writer researching a story * b) a reenactor working on their persona c) a gamer working on a role-play scenario (GM) or background (player character) d) an educator of some type, planning an experiential learning for their student(s)

Or similar situations.

Many of which can be pleasant ways to spend one's time. A few of them even connect to earning a living.

• Note: this sub has rules about authors' use of the forum. Check with a Mod if you can't find them.

I assumed it was coming from authors or game developers.

I think it’s kind of funny/silly. People can’t understand or relate unless they pretend they are in specific circumstances.

I always assumed these were asked by writers looking for accurate world building info.

Not common in the US, but I think there are also people seeking info for fan fiction or other forms of writing. The same thin happens in other specific subs like "names".

I don’t know why but find it super annoying. I usually downvote those posts on principle. To answer your question I’ve always taken it to be a goofy Reddit thing more than being specific to any geographic region.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a mental picture is worth at least 500. IT is easier to frame an issue in terms of a role-playing example than to dissect and present it linguistically and logically.

Oddly, I haven't come across a question like this on my feed just yet. I probably will though now that I mentioned it.