Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
675
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What to do with an old answer if I want to change it completely
This recent edition to a high votes answer is interesting:
What is the historical background of the current Ukraine crisis (2014)?
The most voted answer was edited by the user, saying:
"I re-...
- 4,901
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1
answer
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6-month ban, 1 question, banned again, why?
I endured a 6 month ban, then posted my first question in a long time in September. I was about to post a new question today just to discover I had been banned again.
It puzzles me because that ...
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Is it immoral to post a history-related photo like this one or not?
Honest question. There is no known photo of Homer Plessy, of Plessy v. Ferguson. The photo which often turns up in searches is absolutely not him; a case of mistaken identity now well documented.
I ...
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What's actually wrong here? Should we always avoid even mentioning or citing the present within a question post?
I've asked the following question (shown below) and two down votes and two close votes immediately appeared. So I (at least temporarily) deleted it and decide to explore the issue further here first.
...
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3
votes
3
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Shouldn't this description under "Russia" tag be changed?
I read here under the info on "Russia" tag:
The nation's history began with that of the East Slavs, who emerged as
a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD.
...
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1
answer
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Shouldn't a question strictly about Kievan Rus get its own tag and not one about Russia (or Ukraine)?
This question (When did Kievan Rus' rulers become culturally Slavic?) has become subject to a comments war because of a Russia tag added and/or removed. I have created a tag kievan-rus in order to ...
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Are reference requests or solicitations for book recommendations allowed?
I am a lay person, not a historian. Specifically, I'm a scientist. I am looking to find book recommendations to help me answer (or at least explore) rather broad historical questions. Examples of ...
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Question closed for "promote or discredit a specific idea, theory, cause, group or person"?
It was a question about evidence, that's it. How is that not a valid question? It's a question about prehistory, which is allowed.
If the promotion was that it looked for evidence, well yeah. If the ...
user62124
3
votes
1
answer
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Why was the question about Nikolai Gogol's family name closed?
I've noticed that per-site metas are often littered with complaints/questions about question closure- so here's my own contribution to that genre.
I'd like to seek clarification on the closure of this ...
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2
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Is asking about the reason an old noble family chose their last name on-topic here?
I want to ask the reason an old noble family from Ukraine chose their last name. Is it accepted here? If no, where else can I ask my question?
user40948
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2
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Where is HSE regarding the current strike?
It would be nice to hear about the position of HSE as a community regarding the ongoing systemwide moderator strike. Caveat: I understand that the site (HSE) is small and so is number of moderators ...
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0
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Are squad tactics on topic?
I would like to ask about a military concept developed around 1337 but used to day. Politics.SE rightfully told me off, would it be OK here? MartialArts.SE sounds like a worse fit.
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votes
1
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Please ban Wikipedia links
"I actually do think Wikipedia is an amazing thing. It is the first
place I go when I'm looking for knowledge. Or when I want to create
some." -- Stephen Colbert.
The History Stack Exchange ...
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1
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1
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Is the main site a right place to ask after an idiom I cannot seem to find?
This question on ELU, What is the ability to adapt a learned skill to a new environment called?, reminded me of a phrase I encountered years ago, that stuck with me for a while, but that now I cannot ...
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I don't like [u]
A question was tagged with the single letter u. This is the only question with this tag, the tag name has no intrinsic meaning and is probably a typo, and the tag's wiki is empty/nonexistent. Can we ...
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May we deprecate the [policy] tag?
Recommend that we deprecate the tag policy and use the tag site-policy That will enable searching on site-policy to return posts that articulate the policy and culture of H:SE. That, in turn, will ...
MCWMod
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0
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What works and does not work about our reputation system?
This is a current question on meta.
The Stack Exchange reputation system: What's working? What's not?
My answer: in addition to issues of it not helping broaden our cultural reach, it does not ...
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0
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How exactly did Larry Wu-tai Chin's leak (of a classified document in Oct. 1970) allow China "to reap the maximum political benefits"?
I have a question about my History Stack Exchange post: How exactly did Larry Wu-tai Chin's leak (of a classified document in Oct. 1970) allow China "to reap the maximum political benefits"?
...
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1
answer
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2022: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
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2
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0
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Is there actually "confusion" over why this was closed?
Havning previously commented on this closed question, I recently received a comment
could you vote to re open this? Unsure as to why it was closed.. as there seems to be some confusion as to if this ...
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2
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The tag [orthodoxism] is not orthodox
I've always been uncomfortable with the orthodoxism tag here. It's a nonstandard term for what is normally called "Orthodoxy". The questions we have here appear to all relate to what is ...
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2
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When are questions on heraldry on-topic?
I find the subject of heraldry fascinating, have answered a couple of questions here on this topic, and would quite like to ask some of my own questions.
I'm not quite sure, however, what the ...
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2
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Winter Bash 2022 Millnery
Winter Bash 2022 is here on History.SE! Post a reply here to model your hats. Let's see what everyone is sporting.
Best looking and/or coolest gets ... er ... the highest score?
T.E.D.Mod
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2
votes
1
answer
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Should the [lgbt] tag be used only for LGBT history or also about the history of specific LGBT people?
I was looking at the question Are there any photos of Arnold Murray? and got to wondering whether it deserves the lgbt tag. The question is about the same-sex lover of a famous scientist. Partners of ...
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10
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4
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Should there be a policy on History SE for the use of AI-generated answers?
With the public release of ChatGPT, which uses AI to create conversational responses to questions, there has been discussion of banning such answers from the SE network. At least a couple of SE sites ...
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0
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Why use 'piled-up earth supporting a banner for indicating official rank'?
First, apologia for offending anyone. I honestly thought Why use 'piled-up earth supporting a banner for indicating official rank'? was on topic for history!
Second, how can we salvage this ...
user59399
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1
answer
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When and how did X and Y become allies?
This can be asked:
When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
This can't be asked:
'Allies of evil' - US, England, Japan - and Australia? What about the rest of the UK?
Why, and what ...
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1
answer
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Can a request for historiography put a question like this in scope?
A question of this sort might be the following: Title: "Did Germany have a better strategy to win World War II than the one she actually used?" And the punch line might read, "what did ...
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is this community answer-shy? If so, why is that?
My question received at least 2 comments which could have been answers. The question's subject matter is changes in historical views over time. So it's clearly on topic here.
Yet, people not only ...
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1
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How should moderators deal with comments, when should those be pruned, deleted or "moved to chat"?
The present situation regarding comments seems to be deteriorating. Bad comments stay, good comments go, and the site does not get any better with this.
Bad comments left standing
We all know what ...
- 80.8k
2
votes
1
answer
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Is this proposed 'duplicate' question marked both wrongly and in a worse direction?
On Where can I find all Hitler speeches in original German?
it was proposed that this would be a duplicate of Where can I find a reliable archive of Hitler's speeches?
To this duplicate proposal ...
- 80.8k
3
votes
2
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Do we need a canonical question for how to find a famous person's grave site?
Recently there has been a spate of questions each regarding a single person, attempting to locate where that person is buried.
August Ferdinand Möbius
Armand Borel
Ernst Kummer
Édouard Lucas
Robert ...
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1
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Sociology dataset
I'm looking for sociology datasets, such as one in this link (Fig. 1), which shows interactions between people, labeled based on their features, like age, race, or gender. It seems History ...
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Where might one ask a speculative "off-topic" question?
Just that. Can someone recommend some other sites, not part of SE?
Thanks!
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1
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Question unfairly closed
I recently posted this question, I got the following set of three comments. Which I quote and try to understand one by one
India is nine times the size of Germany, and roughly the size of Europe west ...
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2
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I added explanation of this question
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/69367/what-could-have-the-carthagian-do-to-prevent-their-genocide
People think I want to "blame" Carthagian by asking those questions.
The issue ...
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Are History.SE's moderators paid for their contribution?
Are History.SE's moderators paid for their contribution?
Coz, apparently, it requires a great amount of time reviewing the posts.
user56109
4
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2
answers
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Do we need to broaden the 'higher bar' policy to all questions relating to the history of the Jews and Jewish matters?
The question below pongs of antisemitism and was rightly closed.
Are there any kernels of truth in the Jewish story of Purim?
Currently we have a policy which spells out that any Holocaust-related ...
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4
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answer
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Please try to _always_ explain editing of 'controversial' passages
A recent edit to the title of a question that made the Hot Network Question list removed a — in my opinion — quite significant word. This might change the meaning of the title or how it is read, thus ...
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How could I improve this closed/deleted question about colonization?
See the subject.
The automatically/by-roomba deleted question is:
How/Why do mainland people end up in an empire's colony? Eg Spaniards in the Philippines?
I thought it was pretty good.
But moderator ...
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3
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Why is it ok for a single person to close a question based on speculation?
Which factions of the Japanese government were in favor of racial hygiene practices during WW2 and prior to WW2?
The question was asking if there were more factions and people who supported racial ...
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Source Request: Danish State in the Early Modern Period
I'm hoping that the logic we had where source requests in Meta, i.e., questions which are open-ended, are okay is still valid.
With that in mind, I am looking to find books relating to Denmark in 16th ...
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0
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FYI: new biblical archaeology magazine
For those interested in biblical archaeology, a new magazine has recently been published:
Let The Stones Speak, with potentially interesting topics.
E.g. this first issue includes Top 10 Biblical ...
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3
votes
2
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Do questions about current events of historic significance belong here?
So, I have a question that is related to the currently (Feb 24 2022) ongoing military events in Ukraine. It would be titled as "Why are the casualties on both sides in the Ukrainian war so low ...
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Are questions asking for deciphering texts on paintings (or other objects) allowed?
This question, What's the text in "Mystische Jagd" by Martin Schongauer?, just got asked on Arts & Crafts SE.
The user presents us with a painting in which a Latin text in Gothic script ...
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7
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2
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How reliable are the sources we use?
Background
I grew up in the USSR. I read the book 1984 in the year 1984 (it was a set of photographs, page by page, of a book printed in the West and smuggled into the USSR).
My only source of ...
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11
votes
1
answer
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Is the History Stack activity experiencing a major downward trend?
When looking at the year in moderation post, I did a little digging, and checked the question counts over the last 10 years using the search is:question created:year. We get the following numbers:
...
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1
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Disambiguate [indian] (or merge it into [india])
The indian tag has 20 questions and no tag wiki or excerpt, and (as far as I can see) except for How did Pocahontas die?, all questions are about India's (former) inhabitants or languages, for which ...
- 1,553
3
votes
1
answer
72
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2021: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
- 101
8
votes
1
answer
254
views
How should we recognize our anniversary?
Our ten year anniversary is coming up. There are rumors that SE corporate is going to give us an anniversary gift. While I'll be happy to celebrate our collective achievement, I wonder how we should ...
MCWMod
- 32.4k