Ask HN: Is There an HN for History?

1 points by his_t ↗ HN
As the title says, I'd appreciate your pointers to an HN-like environment focused on history.

Thanks

11 comments

[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 32.2 ms ] thread
What's an "HN-like" environment?
slightly better behaviour than reddit but that said, /r/AskHistorians comes to mind. It's gatekeeping but of a pretty understandable kind

"like HN" is where its text only, simple interface, web based and based on good behaviour but otherwise is pretty much discussive in a simple nested tree thread model. reddit is not text only.

HN is not based on good behavior...

The vast majority of the highly upvoted comments here are, to some degree or another, FUD. I would not hold HN up as any kind of bastion of quality, it's just another forum. No better, no worse.

Try Stack Exchange. Again, do not put it on a pedestal but it has some good answers that cite many sources you can then go investigate yourself.

Well, thats your view. It begs the question: do you exclude yourself from that, and if so, why are you here?

"No better no worse" implies there is no qualitative difference between them "they're all the same" -again, I think thats an over reach. They have differences. Of course, all finches are finches. But they differ by niche, and so differ by beak, and plumage. Likewise, forums are better or worse for a different point of view, or criterion.

I like HN. I'm not really saying anything else.

I agree HN has a bad side: the tendency of people to simply refute any stated view because they like being contrarian, and because they assume they know something in a field. It's maybe a corollary of Gell-Mann disease. (btw what you did is not this, you just said something else contrarian)

A common pattern among people who visit this forum is to idolize/worship it for its "high quality" content, when in reality the quality is actually bad in different ways they're not knowledgeable enough to understand.

You seem like you're falling for that trap by asking such a naive question as posed in your submission. No, there is not an "HN for History" because if there were, it'd be terrible and full of misleading information and outright lies. That pattern works for tech in ways it doesn't work for history, or many other fields of study.

And for what it's worth, who I am or what I think of myself is irrelevant.

i'm not the OP. do you really believe in tech exceptionalism?

oh wait. a 79 day old account. So.. you're accruing karma by being contrarian, and I've just been suckered into responding? Is that it? I think I'll flag or delete this thread. -- except I can't delete. So.. yea.

I think this is the perfect counterexample to the idea that HN is a good pattern upon which to look for a quality forum.

Dismissive, elitist, and equips the very people least qualified to moderate with the tools needed to attempt to silence voices they deem "contrarian" (whatever that means).

You don't want this in other contexts. Heck, you don't want this behavior in this context.