Edges@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
A big part of what makes it work on reddit is the large number of historians willing to provide lengthy well cited answers. Lemmy doesn’t have that.
Unfortunately not everything that works there works here. I’ve started a few different communities on a few different accounts and the only ones that take off are the ones I haven’t tried to force, they just sort of naturally drew people and ran themselves.
I hope I’m wrong though and askhistorians takes off. It would be fun to have here.
wjrii@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Honestly, the best history discussions on Lemmy seem to be people explaining history memes. That’s actually fitting for the type of content that has generally maintained momentum here. The quality of discourse we get here is quite good when it happens, but we are dealing more work broad-minded amateurs who respect proper historiography, rather than than actual historians. The name of this community does it a disservice in that case.
AH is a special case on reddit. Their moderation is unapologetically draconian and exclusive, and they’ve said on many occasions that they’re openly in it for the large preexisting audience, and find the rest of Reddit culture and admin tools to be a burden. You know exactly what you’re getting with them: either nothing, or really interesting responses from millennial historians with masters and PhDs.
I generally love it, except for the occasional AMA with some author/well known professor who is half-assing the discussion, yet the mods don’t want to alienate them because there could be IRL professional repercussions.