#askhistorians is a HEAVILY moderated subreddit

[lesbianshepard]

these are the questions about history that the people really need to ask

#m #the mods adding the 'great question!' flair is so funny #askhistorians is a HEAVILY moderated subreddit #they delete a LOT of replies unless your answer is well thought out and require citations #like it's a serious history subreddit

[recovering-redditor]

the tags on the post abput plato makse me think u know a lot about ancient greece and im just sayin tht if you wanna say more about ancient greece i can guarantee at least 2 notes on every post about greece

no pressure ofc i just like knowledge and you seem smart

Thank you so much! For reference, I have a bachelor’s in World History, so I know a little bit about plenty of things, especially research, but I don’t think I could really claim expertise in anything. Couple of notes for Ancient/Classical Greece, though, since you did ask:

Yeah, we don’t have a lot of (any? I don’t think) surviving literature from contemporary Spartans about life in Sparta. The stuff we do have is, for example, Herodotus and Thucydides writing history books and including anecdotes and brief descriptions of things that maybe existed. So we maybe know the rough outline of their legal system, but not necessarily how reliable that factoid about the black broth is.

Athens can fucking suck my dick and balls. We DO have records from contemporary Athenians about living in Athens, not just books but plays, which frequently kind of read like when a fanfic author pretty clearly wants to make a point. Anyone wanting to make a point about democracy should examine their feelings about the good ol U.S. of A.’s treatment of its allies, then read up on the Delian League. Additionally, if we’re grading womens’ rights on a curve because this is Greece, Athenian authors specifically described Sparta as a place where women were more liberated.

To Point 1: is this actually true? Who the fuck knows. Again, we have nothing from Sparta, and complete knowledge of the writings from 0 authors - it’s been a couple thousand years, stuff gets lost.

Contemporary source: Brill’s New Jacoby, an online repository where we track and catalogue every time an author mentions another author, and what we can conclude they probably wrote about. Classicists are like librarians, in that they have spent a long time learning the perfect way to do their niche extremely well. I sometimes wish I was at their level, it’s ridiculous.

For general reading: r/askhistorians, one of the best damn things on Reddit. Maybe my favorite, actually - it’s a heavily moderated question-and-answer subreddit, run by actual historians who actually know their shit.

Wow, this really got away from me. Anyway, that’s a quick rundown of most of the useful information I have. I don’t have sources for any of it, this is mostly information I vaguely remember from a 200-level class from a few years ago. Don’t treat it as gospel, but do me a favor and take the Athenians off of their pedestal.

[sabakos]

redditors will be like "it's not that bad, you're just looking at the wrong subreddits"

That was probably true at some point, maybe in 2012-13 or so? Not anymore, though. Mediocrity has a special talent of avoiding moderation, those with nothing to contribute to the conversation but a strong desire to feel like they can will find a way of doing so. Even if you heavily moderate responses like r/AskHistorians does, the questions themselves will become mediocre. Ergo, public online spaces that aren't user-curated always become a toilet.

It's honestly shocking they've held on this long, but Reddit is actually more of a living fossil in this respect than Tumblr or Twitter, unlike your average microblogging platform it isn't even technically Web 2.0, it's community-centered content curation, the only user-centeredness of the model is choosing which communities you're a member of.

#discord isn't technically even web 1.0 if you care

[goosegoblin]

Hey Jess, I've never really understood reddit but I kinda wanna try it out except it seems super confusing!! Do you have any tips for getting started or any subreddit recs? ☺️☺️

Hello!

So you’re right- Reddit is very confusing to try and get into. Essentially, it creates a news feed based on subreddits you ‘subscribe’ to (meaning you see their posts in your news feed). When you click on a post’s comments, there will be comment chains. That’s the main things that looks confusing, I think- comments can nest more or less endlessly, so you can end up with comments on lots of different levels and it looks confusing. You can always just click ‘hide child comments’ on a comment to hide all replies and make it look nicer!

So Reddit, like any website, is diverse. Reddit is a very very popular website, and it does have some very unpleasant groups within it. Overall, I’d argue it’s centrist but right-leaning, and very very American-centric. If you end up on the wrong subreddits, you will be plunged into straight-up alt-right hell. If you go on the right ones, it’s a somewhat pleasant experience, as long as you know when to stop reading the heavily downvoted comments and just log off.

(Upvotes and downvotes affect where a comment appears within a chain when you sort by ‘top’ or ‘best’, which is the standard sorting option for most threads. The most upvoted will display first, the most downvoted last, etc. You’re meant to upvote when a comment adds to the discussion and downvote when it doesn’t, but nobody uses them that way because this is the internet.)

You’ll sometimes see people refer to ‘defaults’. Defaults used to be the subreddits that everyone would automatically be subscribed to when they signed up- sort of like a starter pack. A while ago Reddit vastly increased the number of defaults and, in the process, wrecked a lot of subs. For examples, twoxchromosomes, the feminist/ women’s space sub (not transphobic despite the name) got made a default and got filled with men howling that they had to see Women’s News on their feed (never mind that you can... unsubscribe...). Defaults no longer exist, but some damage has definitely been done, as when smaller subs get bigger they tend to draw in more of the centrist-teenage-boy userbase. Anyway.

Another thing to note is that sometimes threads get ‘brigaded’. Brigading happens when a thread is linked somewhere else on Reddit and people from that subreddit turn up and start arguing/ pushing their own agenda. This happens most commonly with /r/gendercritical, Reddit’s TERF sub. Brigading is technically against the rules, but there’s not too much you can do when it happens other than accept that that thread is garbage now.

(or, if you’re me, argue with transphobes because you don’t value your free time and mental well-being)

It very much depends on what you like and what you’re into, but some of the subs I spend the most time in are:

/r/nosleep: original horror fiction. Some REALLY good stuff here. Sort by top of all time and prepare yourself. My personal favourites include ‘Have you heard of the left/right game?’ (which is a series), ‘Feed The Pig’ and ‘The Deepest Part Of The Ocean Is Not Empty’. 

/r/shortscarystories is good for the same thing, but in less words. There are some incredibly talented people there.

/r/askreddit: this is one of the biggest subreddits (I think it might be the biggest?) and the premise is simple: ask questions, other people answer. Askreddit varies from amazing to terrible depending on who shows up to answer. That being said, I’ve lost hours in AskReddit threads reading personal stories, recommendations, warnings, celebrations and whatever else. It’s a great sub to get started in IMO.

/r/bestoflegaladvice offers a space to discuss threads from /r/legaladvice and other legal advice threads. This sub has been my obsession for over a year now. Go on top of all time and live your best life. Be cautious, though, as the nature of the subs mean that rape/ assault do come up quite often.

/r/nostupidquestions is exactly what it sounds like. Sometimes you see a question and you’re like ‘.... huh. how DOES that work?’

/r/askscience is a beautiful place. The moderators rule with an iron fist and comments that do not answer the question get deleted very quickly. People are also flaired (have a little bit added by their name) in accordance with their field of study/ qualifications, and you have to send the mods proof in order to get that. I’m told /r/askhistorians is a similarly excellent sub.

/r/relationships is an excellent place for drama, if you’re into that. Again, top of all time and controversial of all times are my jam. Again, warnings for assault, abuse etc apply.

/r/trollxchromosomes is a great place for feminist chat, memes and anger. /r/twoxchromosomes used to be where people went for that, but after it got made a default, it never really recovered IMO.

/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns, often referred to as traa or similar, is a sub for trans people by trans people that is primarily just memes (there are other subs for more serious conversations). I like to hang out there to get memes to send my trans & NB friends, and everyone there is so lovely and kind.

/r/actuallesbians is a great space for WLW of all types! They block transphobes, biphobes, aphobes etc- the ‘actual’ is just there because /r/lesbians is a porn sub.

If you’re from the UK, /r/casualuk is one of my favourite places. It’s nice to get away from the unrelenting Americanness sometimes.

/r/youtubehaiku collects short (under 30 second) videos and I love it. Again, top of all time. It’s pretty meme heavy at times, but I still enjoy it a lot. /r/meirl and /r/hmmm also offer good memes/ funny pictures.

(I also enjoy /r/gay_irl lmao)

Uhh /r/todayifuckedup (commonly referred to as TIFU) is another one that’s great to binge-read top of all time, as it’s people recounting their biggest fuck-ups which is excellent for schaudenfreude. 

I really really love /r/maliciouscompliance which is beautifully summarised as ‘following the letter of, but not the spirit of, a rule’. Basically, fucking people over by doing exactly what they asked of you.

/r/wholesomememes and /r/humansbeingbros are good places to cheer you up and make you feel good!

/r/blackpeopletwitter, /r/whitepeopletwitter and /r/scottishpeopletwitter: the holy trinity

I could keep going for ages, haha. Half of the fun of Reddit is discovering new subs, though, so I won’t. Happy Redditing! xx