In true badhistory fashion, I am typing this out while nursing a hangover, so bear with me. Also thank you for your patience while I found time to do this. This post will have 3 parts:

1. A breakdown of the the statistics of our users.

2. A break down of the questions relating to Badhistory and its current direction/feeling/ecosystem.

3. A moderator response, opening it up to discussion for the future growth of Badhistory.

Finally, here is the link to the results!

Volcano Worshiper Summary

Okay lets blast through this, buckle up!

Average Badhistory User:

Why hello there 19-22 year old white man, who happens to like women, but none the less is single. Feel free to take a seat while we discuss how we are Atheist, but not like /r/Atheism, if you know what I mean. It brings me back to our college days that we have or are currently experiencing right? Oh boy, these last few elections across the world have been a bit tough for us, people of left leaning feelings, hasn't it? It almost makes us forget that the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead right? Oh, and we are feminist btw, so that's chill.

Historyness^tm

• 76% of people like European history, followed by 50% for military, you Eurocentric fucks ^/s

• Around 70% read academic history books and had history-related education

• 56% do not care about top-down/bottom-up

Fun Facts

• 30% of commentators have no idea who the moderators are

• 30% of people are angry that we forgot to include snapshillbot (/r/botsrights) in the vote for favorite moderator. /u/Quouar is the leader for favorite human moderator (for good reason).

• 16% have met a fellow badhistory member (or I guess got a friend hooked on the sub). No horror stories yet, just make sure you shower beforehand!

• Badhistorians 'roll up on the scene like the Count of Monte Cristo' (44%)

• /u/GOD-WAS-A-VOLCANO was the prophet of the Volcano

• 30% of us believe that Iron Man was right, but he was just being a big old dick about it, compared to the 17% who think Captain America was right. 37% hate everything about this question.

You're going to be stuck on an deserted island with David Irving and Bill O'Reilly. You can only take one thing with you to this island. What would you bring?

• 'Literal Figurative Communism', 'A Bomb', 'Shoot Toby Twice', 'Power of flight', 'Shipping container filled with mayonnaise', 'Earplugs'

• 61% of us are NOT Stem, surprisingly

• 100% thought the survey was too short

• Lots of people are equally angry and happy with the survey, I think we will strip out a lot more questions for next one that may feel outdated/off topic and not funny.

So About Badhistory...

How is the Subreddit doing:

• 13% say its doing mediocre to poorly (1-5)

• 46% say its good (6-7)

• 38% say its going great (8-9)

Moderators:

• 17% say medoicre to poorly (1-5)

• 28% say we doing good (6-7)

• 57% say its going great (8-9)

'Notable Person said something wrong, how much effort needed in the post':

• A strong plurality wanted a highly detailed post (25% for 10)

• The middle was populated, with ~64% combine in the range 3-8.

• The 'more effort' had more votes compared to low effort (1-5: 28%, 6-10: 71%)

'What should Badhistory be', 1 being nearly shitposts, and 10 being only high effort essays.

• A strong plurality wanted moderation/variation/middle ground (19% for 5)

• The middle heavily populated, with ~84% in range 3-8.

• The ranges were nearly equal, with 1-5 having ~48% and 6-10 having ~49%, with a bell curve around 5.

'How often are you on Mobile (1) or Desktop (10) when on badhistory'?

• The three highest groups were (5: 15%), (10: 13.8%), and (1: 12.6%).

• Mobile (1-5) having a slight edge of 55% compared to Desktop (6-10)

'Your feelings about submitting posts to badhistory:'

• 58% just want to read

• 8.6% have submitted

• 33% wish to submit

Why do you visit badhistory?

• Mocking of badhistory (88%)

• High quality posts (82%)

• Comments (65%)

• CircleJerk (54%), Procrastinate (50%), Community (32%)

Moderator Feedback:

First off, other moderators will chime in the comments to give more perspective and more details, but I'll kick off. I think there are three big issues that we need to understand for badhistory to flourish.

Wheres the Content?

Its no secret to long timers that badhistory has left the golden age of posts. While it isn't too much of a graveyard now, the days of 300 comment monday/thursday (DEA remember Thursday threads?) are gone and they are lucky to reach 100. Same goes with posts, as we get around 4-7 posts a week instead of the ~20 of old.

I (personally) think I have a couple reasons why we slowed down:

1. Phones. Yeah the iPhone has been around for years, but now a large number solely go on reddit, and surf the web on their phone. This makes it harder for people to convince themselves to make a post, either by typing it up on a shitty keyboard or to sit down on their computer. It also hamstrings finding and correcting badhistory, as its harder to surf the web for lots of information on your phone.

2. History. We used to have the moratorium, where we outlawed 3 topics a month because things got repetitive. We binned it for now as we don't have nearly as much repeat posts as we use to. BUT, history is history. The majority of us have all read a post on the lost cause, or on Rommel, or why Rome well. Maybe we have just ran our course on all the easy shit, and no-one really wants to be person #23 to do the same topic, and people don't want to read post #234 about it either. We only have so much history in the public mind that people can get wrong, that it is hard to have a steady stream of new stuff!

I am interested in other people's take on this. I also want to stress that traffic != good. Its OKAY if we take it easy for a while. As long as we are having fun.

Politicized Content.

This has been a 'newish' gripe that has come up for obvious reasons. But it is hard to tackle. I am of the group that there should be posts on politicians (of any group) when they say historical inaccurate things. That's kinda why we are here. The main problem is that the posts must focus on the HISTORY and not the person's political ideology. It could be a test where I replace the source of the inaccuracy with another name and the post should still make complete sense. Now, the public has spoken and the majority wish for good content. So the moderators may be strict on near shitposts on these issues.

Moderators have just added 'soapboxing' to the rules page. Its a last case scenario where a post is more for advocating a position, than correcting history. I expect this to be rarely used, if at all, and we do not want to use unless necessary.

Once again, I am eager to hear your opinions and thoughts on these issues.

Badhistory Duality

Okay, Badhistory is two faces of the same coin. On one hand we have massive R5 heavy breakdowns, which I love. On the other we have funny, shorter, but still informative breakdowns which I also love. Some people prefer one over the other, and that's fine. But we have a contradicting environment here of a fun, history related community that just wants to shoot the shit and people who love to post detailed breakdowns and bath themselves in sources. We cater to both here, and as the questions above show, most people like this style. It just means we have to keep an open mind about the type of content we don't like, but not go overboard so we push out the others. The one thing tying these sides together is this: Educational. People should learn, or relearn, something from every post, be it the true name of St. Willburts third horse or the amount of steel needed to build a battleship, or even if it was truly snowing that one fateful Christmas.

Conclusion

Just wanted to say Thank You! It because of the posters and the commentators that make this place fantastic. We added 'Valued Comment' flair just because some of our fellow BadHistorians are so great at bringing up new perspectives and sources in a respectful way. Its just great seeing this community interact. So thank you!

Please use the comments to discuss any findings or questions, and ask moderators about any issues/thoughts/recommendations you have.