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As a side note, the /r/AskHistorians subreddit is absolutely fascinating, both from a subject-matter perspective, but also from the perspective of an exploratio

As a side note, the /r/AskHistorians subreddit is absolutely fascinating, both from a subject-matter perspective, but also from the perspective of an exploration of the extreme ends of moderation policy. Specifically, the moderators have a zero tolerance policy towards unresearched and uncited answers. If you give an answer that is poorly cited, your comment gets deleted. The practical result is mainly seen in two ways. The first is when extremely interesting questions end up with no answers (the running joke is entire comment chains of [deleted]s). But the second is that when a question does receive an answer, it is usually brilliantly and thoroughly answered, with assumed followup questions answered as well. And those posts end up getting linked to by other social media platforms, paraphrased and summarized on websites like Atlasobscura, and plagiarized by clickbaiters.

refurb 5y ago
Yup. If you want to see a great resource of interesting historical FAQs, look at the r/askhistorian archives. It’s a very impressive collection of answers that are remarkably well done.
jvanvleet 5y ago
Years ago I made a single reply to askhistorians that survived and got a handful of upvotes. Nothing special and yet the one reply I have any pride in.
- mrec 5y ago
  Yes, I have a few of those too. I think of it as Extreme Redditing :)
Mediterraneo10 5y ago
r/AskHistorians is a magical exception where mods are allowed to be very heavy-handed. On other special-interest subreddits, discussion quality has become very low since 5 years ago or so. The redesign hid the sidebar from users, so people don’t see the FAQ there and just post the same questions over and over again. Knowledgeable regulars don’t want to keep answering the same questions, so they leave. So, it is more likely that unknowledgable people will post crap replies.* But mods are afraid to be strict and delete bad-quality posts and replies, because apparently there is a way for ordinary redditors to complain to Reddit, who can then assign the sub to other mods who promise to be tolerant. Corporate Reddit wants people asking the same things again and again, and posting replies regardless of quality, because that means engagement. * (A good example of this is any post on a mainstream travel reddit asking about travel to Iran. Many tourists go to Iran – nationalities other than the US and UK can get visas, and they overwhelmingly enjoy their time there. For 30 years it has been a common rite of passage for Eastern European backpackers, their first trip outside the Europe–Turkey–Caucasus region. On dedicated travel forum websites, people know this. But Reddit threads quickly amass replies from Americans like “Dude, you’re going to get beheaded.”)
mrec 5y ago
> If you give an answer that is poorly cited, your comment gets deleted. That's not quite true. Sources are strongly encouraged but not required. However, if you're asked for sources and don't provide them then yes, you will probably get deleted. [1] In practice, it's usually pretty obvious which replies aren't going to be able to back themselves up, and they almost always fail the "in-depth" test too making it a moot point. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_sources https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_sourc...
pmoriarty 5y ago
I kind of wish HN would try to up its game in terms of moderation, because the signal to noise ratio here could be better. It doesn't have to go to the extreme of AskHistorians, because there just aren't enough experts on all the various topics that get discussed here to mandate scholarly monographs in replies, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.
sorokod 5y ago
I got put off /r/AskHistorians after my question was removed due to violation of "no self post" rule ( whatever that is). The question was "Who owned the bank of England before it was nationalised in 1946".

refurb 5y ago

Yup. If you want to see a great resource of interesting historical FAQs, look at the r/askhistorian archives. It’s a very impressive collection of answers that are remarkably well done.

jvanvleet 5y ago

Years ago I made a single reply to askhistorians that survived and got a handful of upvotes. Nothing special and yet the one reply I have any pride in.

mrec 5y ago
Yes, I have a few of those too. I think of it as Extreme Redditing :)

Mediterraneo10 5y ago

r/AskHistorians is a magical exception where mods are allowed to be very heavy-handed. On other special-interest subreddits, discussion quality has become very low since 5 years ago or so. The redesign hid the sidebar from users, so people don’t see the FAQ there and just post the same questions over and over again. Knowledgeable regulars don’t want to keep answering the same questions, so they leave. So, it is more likely that unknowledgable people will post crap replies.* But mods are afraid to be strict and delete bad-quality posts and replies, because apparently there is a way for ordinary redditors to complain to Reddit, who can then assign the sub to other mods who promise to be tolerant. Corporate Reddit wants people asking the same things again and again, and posting replies regardless of quality, because that means engagement. * (A good example of this is any post on a mainstream travel reddit asking about travel to Iran. Many tourists go to Iran – nationalities other than the US and UK can get visas, and they overwhelmingly enjoy their time there. For 30 years it has been a common rite of passage for Eastern European backpackers, their first trip outside the Europe–Turkey–Caucasus region. On dedicated travel forum websites, people know this. But Reddit threads quickly amass replies from Americans like “Dude, you’re going to get beheaded.”)

mrec 5y ago

> If you give an answer that is poorly cited, your comment gets deleted. That's not quite true. Sources are strongly encouraged but not required. However, if you're asked for sources and don't provide them then yes, you will probably get deleted. [1] In practice, it's usually pretty obvious which replies aren't going to be able to back themselves up, and they almost always fail the "in-depth" test too making it a moot point. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_sources https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_sourc...

pmoriarty 5y ago

I kind of wish HN would try to up its game in terms of moderation, because the signal to noise ratio here could be better. It doesn't have to go to the extreme of AskHistorians, because there just aren't enough experts on all the various topics that get discussed here to mandate scholarly monographs in replies, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.

sorokod 5y ago

I got put off /r/AskHistorians after my question was removed due to violation of "no self post" rule ( whatever that is). The question was "Who owned the bank of England before it was nationalised in 1946".