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MetaAll right, badhistory. Let's talk. (self.badhistory)

greyspectre2100Pawn Stars: Nazi Edition が 投稿

It's Friday afternoon, and I've got about ten minutes left on my lunch hour as I write this, but I feel like it's necessary to get something out there in this uneasy quiet that has settled on the subreddit.

A little bit of background about me: I'm a dude that lives in Idaho. My primary occupation is in IT, but I dabble in history because I think to understand who you are, you have to know where you come from. Part of that is because I don't know exactly where my family line comes from; my paternal ancestors, the ones who gave me my last name, peter out in northern Tennessee in the 1870s, and there's only vague supposition and family oral legend about how we ended up with our last name. Predictably, it contains crime, intrigue, and illegitimate children, and might be 100% complete bullshit. The other part that truly inspired me was seeing Abraham Lincoln's hat in the Smithsonian, and being unable to get the idea that it could tell some amazing stories if it only had a voice out of my head.

If you're still awake at this point, good!

Let's be honest for a moment. Things are changing around here. Some moderators have gone, some have stayed, some are new (like me. Hi Mom!). There are concerns about the community here, that we've lost some of that AskHistorians After Dark feeling, that maybe we're not focusing on the bad history that's been posted so much as we're focusing on those smug bastards the users who don't have it quite right (or not at all right) being wrong, that civility is on the wane.

I am interested in thoughts. How are you feeling about BadHistory? What makes you stay (or, conversely, has you leaving)? What would you like to see? What do you not like to see? How would you fix the things that you feel are broken?

I'm not putting on my moderator suit because it's still being sewn together in the back, but the rules are still fully in force for this. Be civil. Be thoughtful. Don't be a dick. I don't want to learn how to smite people in my first 24 hours on the job, but since I am now LITERALLY HITLER, I know I can.

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[–]nachofHistory is written by a guy named Victor 11ポイント12ポイント  (0子コメント)

I am interested in thoughts. How are you feeling about BadHistory? What makes you stay (or, conversely, has you leaving)? What would you like to see? What do you not like to see? How would you fix the things that you feel are broken?

Feeling smug about knowing better than lost causers is a nice feeling, but ultimately empty. And it gets repetitive.

What I really like, what I came here for and what made me stay here, is the really well thought posts that teach me stuff I honestly didn't know, either because I fell prey to the popular misconceptions or because I just didn't know anything about the topic. The best example I can find is that one series about the myths surrounding the European conquest of the Americas.

I also really enjoy the existence (although I rarely read them) of the ultra pedantic posts about how the chair that appeared in the background in that one short scenein a show that didn't even claim to be historically accurate was from a different decade.

[–]addledhands 6ポイント7ポイント  (1子コメント)

I think that this subreddit over the last few months has started to feel a lot like the GrammarFails subreddit, and I think that's a problem. There aren't really any rules to GrammarFails beyond: find someone or some institution that wrote something incorrect, and post it. The actual result are dozens of posts from Facebook and other social media, places where good grammar isn't exactly the norm, and a sort of sadistic glee with jumping on people that neither know nor care the rules.

It strikes me that this sort of punishment ought to be reserved for offenders that should know better, like Walmart or Target or whatever screwing stuff up in their ads. But it's not -- it targets small time users, exploiting uneducated folks for sweet justice boner karma.

I see similar things happening here. It's one thing if someone writes a long post with educated airs and is either actively deceiving people or forwarding ignorance; that sort of stuff is great fodder. But casual comments in an AskAnimals post? An askew sentence about FDR on Facebook? This is low fruit, and while the OP posts are often quite thorough, it often feels like the sub just loves picking on people that just don't know any better or lack the education to appreciate the nuance of the actual event.

Sadly, I don't have any examples. I don't read this subreddit a ton, partially because I've been turned off by sniping at what I guess you could call casuals (to use a gaming term). I dislike this kind of thing.

What could be done to make it better? Two things:

  1. An emphasis on going after posts that are written by people pushing an agenda (news media is great for this), intentionally ignorant yet having the education to know better, or people willfully (or ignorantly) spreading misinformation. These are bad things.

  2. A de-emphasis on anything related to social media, and better yet, a de-emphasis on posts made on Reddit (with maybe the exception of content from actual history-related subs).

I don't think that the purpose of this sub is to educate the public, and it's certainly fun to take jabs at idiots, but I think that things can be better. I think BadHistory should target content that gets seen by lots and lots of people (stuff in History Channel, news media, stupid sentences in films like the Caesar reference in Dark Knight), and avoid stuff that just doesn't matter.

[–]Quouarthe Weather History Slayer 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I have examples. You can go through my post history and find several of these posts that latch on to a single line or comment and make a whole essay out of them. It's my modus operandi, if you will.

I fully admit I'm biased, but personally, I don't mind when there's a giant post about one thing that a person said wrong that they likely don't know anything about. For the things I like to write about, it's usually something that most people don't know anything about, and I enjoy bringing knowledge about that topic to the fore. I don't do it because I want to mock the original poster - which is where I think the distinction lies between what you're describing and what I do - but because I'm legitimately interested in these lesser known histories, like the history of ice cream or the history of toilets. Because these histories are so infrequently explored anyway, pretty much the only chance to explore them is when someone is wrong, and so I'll pull them over here.

To be very clear, I don't see mocking as the point at all, nor should it be. I see this as fundamentally a sub for education and for people to learn something new. Learning about battles and political history is great, but that's not all history is, even if that's where most of the bad history is. Dresses, toilets, and Mesoamerican alcohol are part of history as well, and I love being able to write about them.

[–]jordanthejq12 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hi, long time lurker here. I feel that the actual breakdowns of exactly what constitutes "bad history" are more often than not equal parts informative and highly entertaining, so those are good and have kept me hooked to this sub.

As far as attacking the posters themselves, it's important to remember that people will repeat what they've been taught, and that the purpose of this sub is first and foremost to educate, not to mock. Some people literally do not see what is wrong with what they say.

(That said, if the poster is an unapologetic racist/sexist/apologist for some inexcusable evil, they're probably going to end up fair game for mockery anyway.)

[–]Virginianus_sumRobert E. Leesus 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

I'd say that this sub is more or less why I stick around Reddit. I was absent for a couple of months until recently, and it looks like I missed one or two things that happened around here (save for the couple of messages from mods stepping down), but not much seems to have changed.

I think we could benefit from altering the moratorium rules a bit. October's moratorium is basically the same as last month's—maybe we could change it so that (some) things don't appear two months in a row? I think that would help us get a little more content on here. Just an idea.

Other than that, I dunno man. I haven't seen too much incivility in the comments section, though I've seen a couple of comments in the bi-weekly discussion threads mentioning it as a problem. I'd rather it not come down to banning users, but if we gotta, we gotta.

[–]Quouarthe Weather History Slayer 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I always appreciate suggestions on the moratorium, and I've been puzzling over how to switch it for a bit. I think removing them entirely isn't necessarily the solution - the fact that these are so often moratoriumed is a sign that people are really not interested in seeing them - but I do agree that the moratorium should change. I'll see what I can do for November.

[–]andyzaltzman1 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Not long ago the only new post for several days was a "take down" of some TRP bullshit. That most certainly isn't what I come to this sub for, I don't care what the local drunk thinks about WW1 anymore that I do a default sub commentator.

[–]el-b 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

hi