In my experience, the academic subreddits found in the defaults are pretty civil (i.e. science, philosophy, space, history). But they all have well-defined miss

In my experience, the academic subreddits found in the defaults are pretty civil (i.e. science, philosophy, space, history). But they all have well-defined mission statements and heavy-handed moderation (e.g. no memes or any other kind of offtopic discussion). That said, starting from zero is still a good idea.