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r/AskHistorians is amazing. It is probably the most well run and informative subreddit on the whole site.

distances 6y ago
It's indeed goldmine for anyone who's into history. I'm debating myself if this sub is good enough to keep Reddit around or am I better off to just stay completely away.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  Log off and bookmark the specific reddit. It's only addictive if you use the home page features.
  - distances 6y ago
    I was usually using the Reddit is Fun app, but yeah maybe a direct subreddit link in browser could be a good middle road.
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
What's keeping it on Reddit, just inertia?
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Every highly curated subreddit seems to have a regression toward some sort of lowest common denominator and any sort of deviance gets crushed even if it's good correct content that shouldn't be. I'm no historian but seeing this behavior in every subreddit where I have the experience to recognize BS makes me very skeptical of the idea that other subreddits are not doing the same.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Chathamization 6y ago
r/AskHistorians has some very good posts, but it also has a good deal of misinformation, even coming from flaired users. The big problem with it is that the user base and the mods tend to believe that it's accuracy is better than it actually is (and comments from the mods seem to encourage this overestimation). I've seen many people who believe that if a flaired user on r/AskHistorians says something, then it's true (there seems to be a lot of people like that on the aptly named r/badhistory sub, for example). In addition, their yearly April Fools' events (a bad idea in my view) as well the generally poor quality of posts during the first few years makes searching for past answers a pain. You get a ton of information that's flat out wrong, and in the case of April Fools' events the wrong information was actually encouraged (or written) by mods.

It's indeed goldmine for anyone who's into history. I'm debating myself if this sub is good enough to keep Reddit around or am I better off to just stay completely away.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
Log off and bookmark the specific reddit. It's only addictive if you use the home page features.
- distances 6y ago
  I was usually using the Reddit is Fun app, but yeah maybe a direct subreddit link in browser could be a good middle road.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago

What's keeping it on Reddit, just inertia?

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

Every highly curated subreddit seems to have a regression toward some sort of lowest common denominator and any sort of deviance gets crushed even if it's good correct content that shouldn't be. I'm no historian but seeing this behavior in every subreddit where I have the experience to recognize BS makes me very skeptical of the idea that other subreddits are not doing the same.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Chathamization 6y ago

r/AskHistorians has some very good posts, but it also has a good deal of misinformation, even coming from flaired users. The big problem with it is that the user base and the mods tend to believe that it's accuracy is better than it actually is (and comments from the mods seem to encourage this overestimation). I've seen many people who believe that if a flaired user on r/AskHistorians says something, then it's true (there seems to be a lot of people like that on the aptly named r/badhistory sub, for example). In addition, their yearly April Fools' events (a bad idea in my view) as well the generally poor quality of posts during the first few years makes searching for past answers a pain. You get a ton of information that's flat out wrong, and in the case of April Fools' events the wrong information was actually encouraged (or written) by mods.