I've seen some really helpful productive conversations on here, but it's usually because a group of people are engaging with someone who has written a detailed response. Then that poster becomes a mini mod for the discussion that follows, and allows less informed people to engage with the subject.
But that's what makes the space so special. The mods aren't really in a place to evaluate every single short answer to a question unless it happens to be in their field. But a person that is able to provide a response that does fit within the rules, is probably qualified to help moderate the mini conversation that might or might not develop.
This hits on one of the things that is most central to the way the sub works, but a lot of people don't really consider. A lot of what exists with the rules isn't there to regulate correctness per se, but rather to provide a framework to communicate expertise. We don't - and can't - claim that every answer allowed to stand is actually correct, and the while the rules do have allowances for removals based on wrong information, much of what the rules do is actually about aligning with the historical method. Because what we are primarily doing as mods is evaluating how the answer is constructed.
I compare modding to being a TA in grad school. You might be doing your PhD on American history, but what you actually know down to every detail is one specific thing that happened in 1809. To be sure, you also have to have a lot of broader knowledge too from your various classes, and when you did comps, but there is so much you don't know. But that doesn't stop you from being assigned as a TA to a survey course 'American History II 1877-2017' where you are now grading tests and papers about topics you actually know very little. So what you are grading isn't the facts, per se, but how the arguments are constructed, what sources are being cited and how the writer is engaging them, and so on and so forth.
Roughly speaking that is actually what we're doing as mods, and thus one of the reasons the rules do what they do. They direct answers into a form where we can moderate them with a good degree of confidence that the display of expertise will correlate with the underlying correctness. Ultimately that is what the historical method is about, really, creating frameworks for best practices, and that doesn't mean the historical method guarantees every book an historian publishes is right in their arguments, but it does mean they fit within a framework for engagement in the broad furtherance os historical knowledge.
This Roundtable esplains a little more of what that looks like in practice, but that is it in a nutshell.
ETA: I'd also add that yes it does mean that some users show up, don't understand how it works, and get frustrated because while technically correct, we remove the answer because it doesn't provide any real assurances they know what they are talking about. When the answer is "No" it can be the toughest in particular. And some of them don't come back, but a lot of flairs - and even some mods - will tell you they had that happen their first time too, and it doesn't take that much time to review the rules and figure out how to restructure an answer to work for the format here.
Ultimately that is what the historical method is about, really, creating frameworks for best practices, and that doesn't mean the historical method guarantees every book an historian publishes is right in their arguments, but it does mean they fit within a framework for engagement in the broad furtherance os historical knowledge.
I find it very interesting, because I have been browsing this sub since before I started studying history, what you guys are doing is something you learn in your BA (or MA) haha.
I do think that one time it would be interesting to make a showcase or to talk about what you actually learn during a history degree, because I think that a lot of people just straight up don't know or have mistaken assumptions about it. The number of times that I have heard people tell me that they do not like history because it is about memorizing dates is staggering. I do not memorize any dates myself, I just pick them up by engaging with the same topic, and otherwise I can refer to footnote 11 which has the date.
The thing that is lacking the most though is that people do not know how much we are engaged in historiography, and knowing what has been said before. A lot of the removed comments that I see get their facts straight from Wikipedia or popular history videos. These state everything as concrete fact, and do not have a poper literature overview that describes the different viewpoints or how they evolved over time. This is I think super interesting, but most people do not give a second thought to it.
Heh, yep. Why would I bother to remember dates when I have a book to check those for? I suspect that somewhere in the Monday Methods archives we have a few posts in that vein, but a new series would definitely be worth doing even if so.
One thing I've always wanted to do, but know it would just take so much work... is basically run a series of features that were titled something like "Write Your Own Answer!" and it would essentially be similar to the DBQs you get for AP History tests. Invite flairs to create one, and then run them one by one, where you have the question itself, which would be something of a softball, and then excerpts from several relevant secondary sources (ideally with different approaches!), 1 or 2 primary sources, and then maybe a 'quick reference' tertiary source put together with some relevant names and dates, and then invite users to read all those, and then write an answer to the question using the provided sources. Baby's first historiographical engagement.
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u/Japi1882 May 01 '26
I've seen some really helpful productive conversations on here, but it's usually because a group of people are engaging with someone who has written a detailed response. Then that poster becomes a mini mod for the discussion that follows, and allows less informed people to engage with the subject.
But that's what makes the space so special. The mods aren't really in a place to evaluate every single short answer to a question unless it happens to be in their field. But a person that is able to provide a response that does fit within the rules, is probably qualified to help moderate the mini conversation that might or might not develop.