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Gotta respect the iron fist of /r/askhistorians. Probably the best sub on reddit.

by ngold 6y ago

duxup 6y ago
The sound of folks bemoaning getting moderated there is music to my hears. No people, we want someone who KNOWS, not just saw something on the Discovery Channel this one time ... it's such a refreshing change from the magical internet experts that come and go.
dmoy 6y ago
Yea wow, I don't moderate r/askhistorians but rather a different sub, and we sometimes pride ourselves on keeping this relatively clean. But then I stumble across r/askhistorians again and remember that no, no we don't have things under control by comparison. We can barely keep a lid on the vitriol and toxicity, and some of the more blatantly false/scammy advice. r/askhistorians is a whole 'nother level. Sometimes I honestly wish hackernews was run more like r/askhistorians. Too many people here on hn talk a lot of shit on stuff they don't really know much about beyond a cursory understanding (I'm probably guilty myself).
- vikramkr 6y ago
  What do they do well that can be transferred without basically asking the mods to do more work? Isn't it just a manpower thing? Or do they have a way of verifying expertise etc so you know you're getting answers from experts without having to moderate each comment?
  - dmoy 6y ago
    > What do they do well that can be transferred without basically asking the mods to do more work? Nothing > Isn't it just a manpower thing? Yes > Or do they have a way of verifying expertise etc so you know you're getting answers from experts without having to moderate each comment? Well ok yeah I think they can vet expertise beforehand and then have a smaller list of approved posters, but most of the stuff I suspect just gets sent into the moderation queue requiring more humanpower to deal with. That's why I say "I wish" heh, it's non practical here
- trav4225 6y ago
  > Too many people here on hn talk a lot of shit on stuff they don't really know much about beyond a cursory understanding Amen, amen!
- 1_player 6y ago
  > Sometimes I honestly wish hackernews was run more like r/askhistorians. I don't. The moderation and voting/karma system on HN is much better than anything seen on Reddit. People have stupid opinions everywhere in life, but this is one of a few rare havens where it's incredibly easy to find deep and interesting conversation. Reddit ain't it.
  - dmoy 6y ago
    You should spend some time on r/askhistorians then, because it's very much unlike the rest of reddit. It's not perfect of course, but... I see more blatantly false armchair comments here at the top of threads loudly proclaiming something that is not correct than I do in r/askhistorians. I can only tell when it's a topic that I'm actually expert in, so I don't know for sure. But, Gell Mann amnesia...
- InternetUser 6y ago
  Yeah, you're right. HN should allow participation only from people with at least 2 years of education in a Computer Science program.
basch 6y ago
The iron fist is a double edged sword in some senses. Although reddit acted as a free speech haven for a long time, it was only overall, and not ever in major specific communities. True free speech is valued because it fosters debate, and allows bad speech to be rebutted by more speech. A marketplace of ideas, and maybe more importantly, the counterspeech doctrine, are incredibly important principals in justifying the existence of free speech. Fiefdoms more often than not were echo chambers, where to see a response to bad speech, a person would have to know where else to venture. By creating filter bubbles, tribes, echo chambers, reddit was not an exemplar of a free speech haven, but instead a collection of lopsided megaphones pointed in opposite directions, strewn across a hard to navigate map. Strong moderation is what allows communities with strict quality guidelines to function, but also amplifies division. And on the topic of history, a part of me finds it unfortunate that this banning will make historical, sociological, and psychological analysis of trends, thoughts of the times, past bad behavior etc much harder. It's no what.cd or house of wisdom or library of alexandria loss, but it is still a historical record loss of a huge event that happened. I may not have personally liked The_Donald but it was quite the experience, as a fish out of water, to go look at how other people think, communicate, and reason. The culture that developed there will continue to exist, but the ease with which one could passively observe it, and learn lessons from it is greatly diminished. Another double edged sword.
- duxup 6y ago
  > True free speech is valued because it fosters debate, and allows bad speech to be rebutted by more speech. Is that really a thing on the internet though? It seems like the unmoderated free speech havens on the internet are bubbles themselves and I'm not sure there's much real debate going on there....
  - basch 6y ago
    >Some observers argue that the counterspeech principle makes a better ideal than a reality, primarily because some people or groups in society possess far more power than do others. For example, proponents of critical race theory contend that minorities often are denied access to the marketplace of ideas to counter harmful speech. >Others argue that some types of speech — for example, pornography and hate speech — are so harmful that counterspeech alone is not an adequate response. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/940/counterspeech-doctrine https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/940/counterspee... I agree with your point, without some way to structure, weigh, and amplify the signal; noise and polarization are more likely to win out. https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/02/the-illusion-of-a-marketplace-of-ideas-and-the-right-to-truth/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/02/the-illusion-of-a... The final result still leaves me conflicted, in a baby with the bathwater sense. Plenty of the speech in the sub was merely speech I disagreed with, and censoring it all is nowhere close to a least restrictive means way to erase hate. Moments like spez editing a users comment are now erased from the record, for the moment at least archived elsewhere. If a politician ever wanted to go back, look at the pain of others, and use what they learned to bridge divides, to be able to speak to the others, they are now denied this resource for research. That probably bothers me more than the structure of reddit being quasi-free-speech-incompatible. ChapoTrapHouse isnt somewhere I ever went, but from a communication sense, I now feel a missed opportunity to learn how to read their language, and understand or recognize it if I heard it. Between Reddit, Youtube, Twitch, and India; today itself might eventually be regarded as a historical day, where both public servants and private enterprise stood up and said enough, albeit for different reasons.
sireat 6y ago
I respect the iron fist of /r/askhistorians but it has the feel of being impossible to contribute. This is by design but horribly off putting even if you read all the rules. It feels way worse than wikipedia or Stack Overflow inner circle. For example a few years ago there was a question about Hitler underestimating Soviet tank production. I submitted a link to HistoryChannel Youtube audio of the famous Hitler-Mannerheim talk of June 4th of 1942. I included even the exact second where Hitler talks about Soviet tank production. Well, my comment which was 3rd or 4th level down got [deleted]. Why did I even bother? I had a lengthy discussion with the askhistorians moderator on what the problem was. * It was not Hitler since the question was about him. * It was not the fact that this was about as close to primary source as possible. * The problem apparently was that I did not provide enough context. We are talking about providing a primary source in a comment 3 levels down. This leads to a horrible ratio of questions/accepted answers. You would think that with only few historians being able to navigate the requirements the answers would be of the highest quality. When it comes to recent history it certainly does not feel like it. Another example: There was a question on Soviet black markets in 1980s The sole accepted answer referenced one pitiful official Soviet source and that was it. It was a lazy answer. Since all I had was a wealth of anecdata I could not contribute which was fine but the feeling of incomplete answer really nagged me. So you end up feeling like https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/ but unable to do anything. The problem is this, if the official r/askhistorians answer is so obviously(to a biased participant in a recent event) incomplete for recent history how can we trust askhistorians for history where you have no knowledge? It leads to a form of Gell-Mann effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Gotta respect the iron fist of /r/askhistorians. Probably the best sub on reddit.

by ngold 6y ago

Gotta respect the iron fist of /r/askhistorians. Probably the best sub on reddit.

The sound of folks bemoaning getting moderated there is music to my hears. No people, we want someone who KNOWS, not just saw something on the Discovery Channel this one time ... it's such a refreshing change from the magical internet experts that come and go.

dmoy 6y ago

Yea wow, I don't moderate r/askhistorians but rather a different sub, and we sometimes pride ourselves on keeping this relatively clean. But then I stumble across r/askhistorians again and remember that no, no we don't have things under control by comparison. We can barely keep a lid on the vitriol and toxicity, and some of the more blatantly false/scammy advice. r/askhistorians is a whole 'nother level. Sometimes I honestly wish hackernews was run more like r/askhistorians. Too many people here on hn talk a lot of shit on stuff they don't really know much about beyond a cursory understanding (I'm probably guilty myself).

vikramkr 6y ago
What do they do well that can be transferred without basically asking the mods to do more work? Isn't it just a manpower thing? Or do they have a way of verifying expertise etc so you know you're getting answers from experts without having to moderate each comment?
- dmoy 6y ago
  > What do they do well that can be transferred without basically asking the mods to do more work? Nothing > Isn't it just a manpower thing? Yes > Or do they have a way of verifying expertise etc so you know you're getting answers from experts without having to moderate each comment? Well ok yeah I think they can vet expertise beforehand and then have a smaller list of approved posters, but most of the stuff I suspect just gets sent into the moderation queue requiring more humanpower to deal with. That's why I say "I wish" heh, it's non practical here
trav4225 6y ago
> Too many people here on hn talk a lot of shit on stuff they don't really know much about beyond a cursory understanding Amen, amen!
1_player 6y ago
> Sometimes I honestly wish hackernews was run more like r/askhistorians. I don't. The moderation and voting/karma system on HN is much better than anything seen on Reddit. People have stupid opinions everywhere in life, but this is one of a few rare havens where it's incredibly easy to find deep and interesting conversation. Reddit ain't it.
- dmoy 6y ago
  You should spend some time on r/askhistorians then, because it's very much unlike the rest of reddit. It's not perfect of course, but... I see more blatantly false armchair comments here at the top of threads loudly proclaiming something that is not correct than I do in r/askhistorians. I can only tell when it's a topic that I'm actually expert in, so I don't know for sure. But, Gell Mann amnesia...
InternetUser 6y ago
Yeah, you're right. HN should allow participation only from people with at least 2 years of education in a Computer Science program.

basch 6y ago

The iron fist is a double edged sword in some senses. Although reddit acted as a free speech haven for a long time, it was only overall, and not ever in major specific communities. True free speech is valued because it fosters debate, and allows bad speech to be rebutted by more speech. A marketplace of ideas, and maybe more importantly, the counterspeech doctrine, are incredibly important principals in justifying the existence of free speech. Fiefdoms more often than not were echo chambers, where to see a response to bad speech, a person would have to know where else to venture. By creating filter bubbles, tribes, echo chambers, reddit was not an exemplar of a free speech haven, but instead a collection of lopsided megaphones pointed in opposite directions, strewn across a hard to navigate map. Strong moderation is what allows communities with strict quality guidelines to function, but also amplifies division. And on the topic of history, a part of me finds it unfortunate that this banning will make historical, sociological, and psychological analysis of trends, thoughts of the times, past bad behavior etc much harder. It's no what.cd or house of wisdom or library of alexandria loss, but it is still a historical record loss of a huge event that happened. I may not have personally liked The_Donald but it was quite the experience, as a fish out of water, to go look at how other people think, communicate, and reason. The culture that developed there will continue to exist, but the ease with which one could passively observe it, and learn lessons from it is greatly diminished. Another double edged sword.

duxup 6y ago
> True free speech is valued because it fosters debate, and allows bad speech to be rebutted by more speech. Is that really a thing on the internet though? It seems like the unmoderated free speech havens on the internet are bubbles themselves and I'm not sure there's much real debate going on there....
- basch 6y ago
  >Some observers argue that the counterspeech principle makes a better ideal than a reality, primarily because some people or groups in society possess far more power than do others. For example, proponents of critical race theory contend that minorities often are denied access to the marketplace of ideas to counter harmful speech. >Others argue that some types of speech — for example, pornography and hate speech — are so harmful that counterspeech alone is not an adequate response. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/940/counterspeech-doctrine https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/940/counterspee... I agree with your point, without some way to structure, weigh, and amplify the signal; noise and polarization are more likely to win out. https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/02/the-illusion-of-a-marketplace-of-ideas-and-the-right-to-truth/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/02/the-illusion-of-a... The final result still leaves me conflicted, in a baby with the bathwater sense. Plenty of the speech in the sub was merely speech I disagreed with, and censoring it all is nowhere close to a least restrictive means way to erase hate. Moments like spez editing a users comment are now erased from the record, for the moment at least archived elsewhere. If a politician ever wanted to go back, look at the pain of others, and use what they learned to bridge divides, to be able to speak to the others, they are now denied this resource for research. That probably bothers me more than the structure of reddit being quasi-free-speech-incompatible. ChapoTrapHouse isnt somewhere I ever went, but from a communication sense, I now feel a missed opportunity to learn how to read their language, and understand or recognize it if I heard it. Between Reddit, Youtube, Twitch, and India; today itself might eventually be regarded as a historical day, where both public servants and private enterprise stood up and said enough, albeit for different reasons.

sireat 6y ago

I respect the iron fist of /r/askhistorians but it has the feel of being impossible to contribute. This is by design but horribly off putting even if you read all the rules. It feels way worse than wikipedia or Stack Overflow inner circle. For example a few years ago there was a question about Hitler underestimating Soviet tank production. I submitted a link to HistoryChannel Youtube audio of the famous Hitler-Mannerheim talk of June 4th of 1942. I included even the exact second where Hitler talks about Soviet tank production. Well, my comment which was 3rd or 4th level down got [deleted]. Why did I even bother? I had a lengthy discussion with the askhistorians moderator on what the problem was. * It was not Hitler since the question was about him. * It was not the fact that this was about as close to primary source as possible. * The problem apparently was that I did not provide enough context. We are talking about providing a primary source in a comment 3 levels down. This leads to a horrible ratio of questions/accepted answers. You would think that with only few historians being able to navigate the requirements the answers would be of the highest quality. When it comes to recent history it certainly does not feel like it. Another example: There was a question on Soviet black markets in 1980s The sole accepted answer referenced one pitiful official Soviet source and that was it. It was a lazy answer. Since all I had was a wealth of anecdata I could not contribute which was fine but the feeling of incomplete answer really nagged me. So you end up feeling like https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/ but unable to do anything. The problem is this, if the official r/askhistorians answer is so obviously(to a biased participant in a recent event) incomplete for recent history how can we trust askhistorians for history where you have no knowledge? It leads to a form of Gell-Mann effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect