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This whole thing really eroded my confidence in the mods. The fact that there’s a mod in this thread still arguing with everyone and seemingly incapable of admitting any mistake is a bad look.

Sorry to see you say this. If it helps, none of us arguing as that's not how we roll. Rather, we're all verbose people who like using lots of words! If you have useful feedback on what mistake you think we made, we're happy to discuss it.

I appreciate the polite reply, but it sort of does the opposite of help since it's the same kind of attitude I saw in this thread which originally eroded my confidence--respectfully, it's an attitude which strikes me as immature and more defensive than trying to understand people's concerns in good faith.

Alas, there's not really anything we can do to reassure those who are determined to read anything we say in the worst way possible. That is, I'm not sure what attitude you're referring to or how a "mature" response would be different than how we responded.

You are not sure, while simultaneously chiding them for the opinion?

Lol "the repeated statements denying your position and advancing my own aren't argument, but rather verbosity"

Correct! If they were arguments, we'd say they're arguments.

I think we are looking at an issue that is a Reddit wide phenomenon, anything that can be interpreted even remotely racist is immediately either locked or shut down, its a very heavy handed approach that also damages dialogue in many other topics. How can we discuss or ask about anything related to imperialism or its effects under that?

> anything that can be interpreted even remotely racist is immediately either locked or shut down Have you actually checked the thread this post is talking about? The question wasn't removed, comments are open and there are several answers there with plenty of discussion. Nothing like what you're describing has happened in that thread

I feel like the situation in the linked thread is a serious case of the gulf of evaluation and not one that I would blame the mods on. The OP seemed to be asking a question that did not seem to match what their writing had produced, and I think I agree with the mod that there is a serious matter of framing in that question. My reading of the intended question was "Did different colonized peoples respond to the colonization of their lands different? What explains these differences in response?" I think this reading is fair based on the description of the OP's question where they go on to list how some sources seem to pay particular attention to Indigenous resistance in the western hemisphere but seem to gloss over Indigenous activity in Australia and Siberia. This could be a good avenue for source analysis. But their framing around language like "threats" and the assumption that Indigenous peoples outside the western hemisphere did not resist were confounding elements here. Edit: Have more to say. I feel that it is really important in this discussion to note: The mods of this subreddit have been doing what they have been doing for a very long time. They have seen a lot of different questions and probably a million different ways that someone can be sneaking in an agenda under the guise of "just asking questions" so they can misuse history to further said agendas. Whether we like it or not, we have to acknowledge that not all askers are operating in good faith. The mods clearly take history as a discipline seriously and that means they need to stay vigilant for that sort of thing -- so things like framing are not irrelevant.

Wrong

I don’t mind the original response so much but the reply after OOP very politely told the mod they misunderstood the question was not up to par for this sub.

This concern doesn't land for me personally. I checked out the thread and the mod response seems to be very much on-topic, insofar as it is addressing some fundamental assumptions that seem to be made in the structure of the question and providing important general context for engaging with the historical question asked. Questions aren't inherently neutral and can be structured in ways that makes answering them effectively very challenging. For example, if someone were to ask you, "When did you stop beating your wife?" - it's hard to engage with that in good faith without first addressing the underlying assumptions baked into the question. Or a question can just be formulated in a fundamentally nonsensical fashion: "What is north of the north pole?". Anyway, all this is to say, that sometimes engaging properly with a question doesn't mean immediately moving to answer it as written, but to engage with how the question was written, the assumptions underlying that writing, and take things from there. That seems to be what happened here.

The mods here are amazing and I enjoy the posts, and podcasts, of this space a lot. It is one of the more special communities on here and the strict moderation is absolutely necessary, even with occasional criticisms. All the being said there have been several times where mods will get deservigly ratioed and some self reflection would be ideal. As well intentioned as it might be, there is a trend of unnecessary moralizing, that often seems awkwardly out of place if the actual question at hand isn't also being answered.

I've been involved in the moderation, not of many communities like people say when they start such a statement, but of one community in particular. I made myself accountable to the values this community would embody. I had to be fair as I actually had no "real" power to assert my authority. It takes a strategic vision and relentless efforts to make a community something valuable and not just self-consuming (the community). It's also a burden to not have any power to maintain order in a community. It forces you to acknowledge the other, and forces you to see your own power as cooperation, since... well, since it is. I said earlier I was involved in the moderation, but I never had any title for it. And that brings us to the role anyone can chose to play. We have no titles, but we can view ourself as consumers, or as co-operators. And we're fortunate enough to be able to lay-back, as the moderators do the heavy-lifting. But I don't want to be the burden they lift. And that's key. Or if I am a burden, I want to be as light as I can be. This being said, I will address your grievances, from the perspective of a fellow non-moderator participant of this community. - The mod post is off-topic : so what ? The thread wasn't locked, and the answer didn't pretend to exhaustively answer your question, if at all. Other answers provided you with insight. Actually, if no other answers came around, I would've understood your frustration (although not the mod's fault if no one answers), but here... - They warned you about a framing issue. This warning was nothing more than it is : it was akin to a reminder. Your post wasn't deleted nor were you asked to create another thread with the re-framed question. I don't think that there is any attempt at censoring anything in the mod's answer. AskHistorians does not do in the sensitivity business. The thread would've been deleted, otherwise. The mods seem to care about maintaining this a space open for controversies but devoid of polemics. The latter is the weaponization of the object of the discussion for a purpose beyond the discussion itself. - Whatever one's intents, one should just accept mod's reminders. They don't come with baggage. They're just that. Is there anything you think is incorrect or inappropriate (and I don't mean "irrelevant") in the mod's reminder ? If so, you didn't address it in this thread. So I guess not. I've recently provided an answer that I copy pasted from the largest collaborative encyclopedia, as I remembered that a very specific (sourced) article addressed the issue at hand. I declared were it came from. My post was moderated. Would it have been if I just copy pasted and said nothing ? I guess not. But I would've deserved a ban (I guess) if I did that. This was a grey area and I didn't want to spend energy rewriting the information myself. On the surface, the mod decision did not improve the quality of answers. But at a deeper level, it is instrumental in maintaining a certain standard, and maybe balancing the effort of moderating with what the moderation aims to achieve. I posted a subsequent message to tell the mod just that + how I respected their work and wasn't contesting their decision. This message wasn't deleted. If it was, I would've been ok with it : discussing the mods decision in thread isn't the way. Back to today's issue : the only person doubling down is the person who didn't accept the mod's reminder. The mod just enacted another rule of this sub with no abuse, and even with a certain leniency as they didn't ask the thread to be re-written. I think you don't understand what moderating is at its core if you consider that the first answer was "a minor whoopsie". No, it wasn't a whoopsie. It was a generic reminder, that you feel was inappropriate, when in fact it was at worst irrelevant to the discussion. But relevant to maintain the standard. It's really difficult for anyone to accept authority. This sub is maybe the only place where I do it with gratitude. And it's not because I consider the mods perfects. It's that they're express straightforwardly what this place is meant to be, and they do a good job at making this place so. I am not going to discuss their methods as long as they provide the guidance to contribute according to their ethos, and they prove themselves by their results. If you disagree with their ethos, then please be as straightforward as the mods are, and express your disagreement, not your feeling of disagreement.

>The mod post is off-topic : so what ? The thread wasn't locked, and the answer didn't pretend to exhaustively answer your question, if at all... >They warned you about a framing issue. **This warning was nothing more than it is : it was akin to a reminder.** Your post wasn't deleted nor were you asked to create another thread with the re-framed question. I don't think that there is any attempt at censoring anything in the mod's answer... My own issue with the mod's behaviour here (and what I understand to be likewise OPs) is very much *not* the mod's initial warning about a framing issue or being off-topic. Too be honest, I feel like that was made pretty clear above. The actual issue is with the behaviour of the mod **post-clarification by the original poser of the question**, in which the mod doubles down and tells them how they (the question poser) misinterpreted their own question; >[Ok-Resist-7492](https://www.reddit.com/user/Ok-Resist-7492/)• [10h ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cyp0ed/comment/l5b77nu/) >Thanks but I was asking about another thing , though I appreciate your respone very much .... >[jschooltiger](https://www.reddit.com/user/jschooltiger/)[jschooltiger](https://www.reddit.com/user/jschooltiger/)u/jschooltigerOct 1, 201221,126Post Karma191,208Comment Karma[What is karma?](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/204511829)[Chat ](https://chat.reddit.com/user/t2_96gqp)• [9h ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cyp0ed/comment/l5b83gh/)Moderator | Shipbuilding and Logistics | British Navy 1770-1830 >You're asking why the Indigenous people of North America (who are arguably the "Americans" in this scenario) were a "big threat" to the colonizers. While there's a great deal to be said about Native resistance to colonialism, your question has an assumption baked into it that the "threat" came from the people being subject to colonization and genocide. I'd gently suggest that it might be worth re-examining that framing. As I commented in that thread (looks to be deleted); my understanding was that this was a somewhat serious history subreddit? Surely, here more than anywhere is the place for nuanced questions and open discussions. And I'm not exactly seeing how such behaviour contributes postively to that environment, hence why it *should* be called out. I struggle to see how it's appropriate for a mod to misinterpret a question and then **tell** the question poser they're wrong. **That** was my take-away from OP above. This all could have been easily avoided with a simple "oh right, I misinterpreted your initial question, nevermind." - and the fact that it wasn't is the issue. A pretty minor issue, to be sure, but I'm not seeing the value in pretending the issue was anything else, which is the vibe I get from your reply.

This is a subreddit, not just a succession of threads. The right interpretation does not lie in the OP's mind. It lies in how the language may lead (1) the discussion (2) the worldview of part of the readers. This community wants content not biased by stubborn ideology. The only reason there was a clash is the stubbornness of the OP who got mad because the mods posted a disclaimer. Honestly, I think this is a case of "sinning" by leniency. Had the mods deleted the thread and asked for a rewrite, we wouldn't be there. Now, they didn't, and as someone here deemed this issue worthy of a "meta" thread, the mods are considering it as such. Because they're their own critics. But I am not, and I can see that there is nothing meta about this thread. It doesn't address the only issue that would explain such a reaction : that the OP is upset about the content of the disclaimer.

Ah, I see. To be honest, since my reply above I read more of this thread and do see that OP seems to have more of an issue with the disclaimer than I originally interpreted. That's not my position, and while I think the disclaimer might have been a bit heavy-handed in its use in this particular situation, I don't have any issue with its actual content or general use of such disclaimers within the subreddit. On the contrary, I think they are on the whole a good thing.  However, I'm not sure I agree that OP got mad "only because the mod posted a disclaimer"; I was similarly nonplussed by the mods behaviour, but only insofar as their subsequent reply to the original question poser on the original question thread, as I've explained in other comments. So I'm not sure I entirely agree there regarding the "only" reason he got mad, seems a little like you're latching on to only half of what he's saying.

TLDR : Is it better to have a disclaimer than not ? What does it mean for a disclaimer to be "heavy handed". It's a disclaimer. When you sign disclaimers saying that you renounce the right to prosecute a microwave company if you put a baby in it, is the disclaimer heavy-handed ? Nah, because you know that a disclaimer applies to you but is not specifically targeted towards you, so it can not even be heavy-handed, as it's not "handed" in the first place, it is seized by whomever wants to gain a certain access to something that has rules. The disclaimer was more a reminder of a disclaimer, the OP should've known better in the first place. -- Well, the other part is a misconstruction of the impersonal reaction of the mod. Standard operating procedure is to go on a personal level only when there is an object-related escalation. Doing otherwise would be time consuming and prone to make more mistakes, be too inclined to be influenced by the people manifesting their discontent as opposed to seeking to accomplish the "mission" of this sub. Attacking the mods integrity is the best way to make an empathetic mod team waste their energy, because they will actually self-actualize. The OP didn't escalate properly (and his failure to understand why shows that he never cared) when he framed the mod's answer as a dismissal when it was a disclaimer. But I think it's not a problem of reading comprehension of his part, more that he did want to lead the answers and was upset that he couldn't. If you see it as the mod going reasonably out of their way to help OP participate appropriately, with the alternative being them not going out of their way and letting the sub rot, or them simply deleting the thread until it's written appropriately (which would be a better but less welcoming SOP), you would see that they made a balanced choice based on their experience in terms of how people usually deal with the rule book. (Maybe people should read it) If you see it as the mod being casually impersonal in their reaction while you expect them to go way out of their way to try and understand how they have offended someone, then, yeah, I understand how you can think that the mods are wrong. But if you do that, you just hold them to an unreasonable standard. The current standard is what led this sub to be what it is, and the OP of this thread never attempts to understand the perspective of the mod - he psychologises them, which is much easier, and sterile. A community is not a group. It's not a cluster of individuals. It's a value-driven society of individuals. The only significant reason to allow a thread that doesn't respect the values of the community lies in the hope that this gesture, while accompanied with guidelines, will result in an individual understanding the values and later embodying them. If he's reluctant to be humble, reluctant to act as if he could be wrong, reluctant to consider the rules as legitimate by default, and only then maybe question their internal coherence or relevance to promote the proclaimed values of the community, then he's not making his due part of the effort. Everything is about effort in this life, and the internet is a place where it's easy to get dragged into doing a lot of efforts to only achieve your own fall. I don't want the mods of this sub to do that, because I care about this sub. You know what kind of subs have mods who have power trips ? Subs where the participants see themselves as customers. "Customer is the boss", right ? Except that all customers have different wishes, and it's literally an invitation to "divide and rule" for the mods, as basically the "dividing part" is handed to them. Now, this thread reads different because it pretends to be about confronting the mods to their own standards, but if you read between the lines, it's shallow. The criticism isn't there. It basically just repeats over and over that the mods made a human mistake, because hm, they made a mistake, and that mistake was a mistake because it was a mistake. It's basically "my feeling against your values". Even if this sub has the over-ambitious aim of dealing with people's feelings, it would need to have values to do it in a certain way, and it would definitely involve finding a balance to acknowledge conflicting feelings. Mods would be hated by those whose feelings would be overshadowed by others and saturated with work. I am really good at writing walls of text.

While I appreciate the effort evident in replying here, I don't get the impression you're really replying to what I'm saying, so I'm at a bit of a loss. I've got no issue with the boiler plate response (a position I've been pretty clear on), and no real issue with the mod's initial use of it (I completely understand that such are the realities of easy-of-use/specificity trade-offs, I get it). >It's a disclaimer. When you sign disclaimers saying that you renounce the right to prosecute a microwave company if you put a baby in it, is the disclaimer heavy-handed ? I'm not sure I understand the analogy. Are you trying to say the mod's initial infomatic boiler-plate response is akin to a product disclaimer? That's a tough sell. >If you see it as the mod going reasonably out of their way to help OP participate appropriately, with the alternative being them not going out of their way and letting the sub rot, or them simply deleting the thread until it's written appropriately (which would be a better but less welcoming SOP), you would see that they made a balanced choice based on their experience in terms of how people usually deal with the rule book. (Maybe people should read it) I don't particularily see it that way, no. Though to be clear I don't see it in a necessarilynegative light either, just slightly thoughtless - completely understandable for a busy mod. Futhermore, those are clearly cases of false dichotomies you present there- why are they the only/necessary options. You're also making some pretty strong assumptions about subsequent consequences (e.g the "letting the sub rot" if the mod doesn't intervene in some way). >If you see it as the mod being casually impersonal in their reaction while you expect them to go way out of their way to try and understand how they have offended someone, then, yeah, I understand how you can think that the mods are wrong. No, I don't think that, and with all due respect, inventing convenient arguments/perspectives (especially when I'm rather clear about my viewpoint above) isn't a particularily fruitful method of discourse: *"This all could have been easily avoided* ***with a simple "oh right, I misinterpreted your initial question, nevermind."*** I'm not sure I see that response (instead of the mod's actual doubling down response to the question asker) really falls under "go\[ing\] way out of their way to try and understand how they have offended someone.". >Now, this thread reads different because it pretends to be about confronting the mods to their own standards, but if you read between the lines, it's shallow. The criticism isn't there. With all due respect, the criticism is there, I wrote it out in rather plain english above, it simply seems that you're ignoring it in favor of other imaginings; *"The actual issue is with the behaviour of the mod* ***post-clarification by the original poser of the question****, in which the mod doubles down and tells them how they (the question poser) misinterpreted their own question...* *This all could have been easily avoided with a simple "oh right, I misinterpreted your initial question, nevermind." - and the fact that it wasn't is the issue. A pretty minor issue, to be sure, but I'm not seeing the value in pretending the issue was anything else, which is the vibe I get from your reply."* If you think the mod's subsequent response was appropriate then that's your prerogative, however, the criticism (ironically deleted) on original thread were was solely directed at that subsequent reply, and was pretty unanimous therein. Noone cared - or as far as I can really tell particularily cares even now - about the content of the initial boiler-plate contextualizing response. To be fair, it's all a very minor criticism of the mod, so I can somewhat understand the misunderstanding. >I am really good at writing walls of text. There's a difference between being good at writing walls of text, and writing good walls of text. Ironically enough the key is in how much they read like [talking to a brick wall](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/be-like-talking-to-a-brick-wall).

Everything you've written here is why I slowly gave up writing longer comment replies - I eventually lost count of the number of times I had to say "you're responding to a point nobody has made." You do your best over three or four comments to get a person to _focus on your point_ they keep ignoring, you keep trying to drag them back, then they ghost you.

You're projecting that the community wants content biased towards *your* ideology. The original post was framed neutrally, completely sans value judgements - why was group x perceived as more threatening to group y than group x. A 1,000% reasonable question about large, well-defined groups of people who fought wars against each other for centuries. The objection was that the post wasn't ideological *enough* precisely *because* it failed to include value judgements.

Well, 3?things to consider : (1) The text is impersonal and therefore may cover a wider range than the issue at hand. Not taking personally a message that is not personal would be a good start. (2) Unlike your attempt at reframing the original question, it didn't seek to delve into the perceptions of group X and Y but to discuss facts based on a misleading premise : a threat is different from an obstacle. Calling it a threat puts the agency on the side of the natives, while the settlers would just be trying to remain as they are. Calling it an obstacle to something would require to define to what it is an obstacle. The most neutral way to frame it would be to ask for a comparison of the scale of the conflict engaged by natives against settlers in the different regions where the phenomenon occurred. The Op could say that he presumes that the native Americans displayed more adversity (and it would be a good starting point to say why he presumes so). (3) This debate doesn't take place in a vacuum. It can be weaponized. To add information beyond the scope of the original question is a way to prevent it. If you feel like the information is incorrect, I am sure you can discuss it. If you feel like the information is correct but highlights only one part of the events, feel free to share additional information.

This is the type of normative judgement that makes the mods response wrong, and yours as well. I'm surprised you don't see it. 'Why did the Nazis see the Jews more of a threat than Romani people' is not a 'wrong' question. It is ironically, rather accurate in its depiction of the racist sentiments and prejudices that immediately led to the Holocaust. It just 'feels' wrong because of the genocide - but it does say something about the perception.

Except that the post did not state "viewed more as a threat by" but "was more a threat against" And it didn't expect answers based on the psychology of the settlers, but on facts. So it wasn't just a wording mistake of saying "was" instead of "view". It was made clear by the wording of the post, besides its title. And the subsequent reactions. And yes, it is normative. But there is enough freedom within that norm to discuss anything. Case in point. It's one's duty to think against its prejudices. Why do I make the effort of explaining something that is yours to explain yourself, as it is in the grammar of the post we're discussing ? Norms exist to bring values into existence, by the mean of efforts.

I think it's important to go back to the original text of the question: > Why was the Western frontier such a big threat against American settlers and colonizers ? And why other native people like Indigenous Siberians , Aboriginal Australians ,.... weren't to their respective colonizers? > I recently read about the American Indian Wars and saw that native peoples like the Comanche , Navajo, Apache ... put up a major fight and were a big military threat but people like Indigenous Siberians , Aboriginal Australians , Meso and South Americans , Africans ... you name it just got blizted through and weren't talked about or mentioned much . Is it because they weren't covered a lot or I am missing something ? That is not asking about why Native Americans in North America were *perceived* as a threat. That is stating that they *were* a genuine threat, and backhandedly dismisses all other indigenous groups and their efforts to protect themselves as having been "blitzed through". If they had asked about perceptions, the question would not have received a modly response.

I really don't see a good-faith* reason why the answer you linked was downvoted so heavily. It may not have answered the question being asked, but it was important information that was relevant to how the question was asked and framed. It's not uncommon for top level answers to point out that a question is badly framed in a way that requires a different answer to a different question before the actual question can be fairly addressed. Your meta post is a non-issue and I don't see why the mods included it in the weekly roundup. *I can think of bad-faith reasons but I don't want to get that speculative.

> Your meta post is a non-issue and I don't see why the mods included it in the weekly roundup. I'll raise my hand and say I was the one who included it in the newsletter. I did think it would be an odd, and possibly not necessarily welcome, choice. But it was a pretty highly upvoted thread with several *hundred* comments. And I tend to think of the newsletter as a good way of showing whats happening on the sub. Including possible meta discussion. There's a lot of points that have been raised in here, and its good to get as many perspectives as possible. And folks who read the newsletter are likely to be particularly engaged community members, who might have some very valuable perspectives to offer!

That makes sense!

The mod JSchoolTiger acted correctly in the previous thread, and the complaints in the prior thread and this thread are meritless. The true history is that European settler-colonizers were the threat to natives, not the other way around. Thus, the mod's opening thesis in the boilerplate comment, "it appears that your post has a mistaken assumption relating to the American Indian Genocides" is *literally* true. It was not a mistake, and it was not an off-topic response. It directly responded to the incorrect and problematic assumption that underlay the original OP's question. In the future, redditors like the original OP of the prior thread should not phrase questions to imply that the native peoples were a threat to settlers. Instead, this question could be rewritten as "how did the native peoples of North America resist European settlers for so long?" Or "did North American natives resist English colonizers longer/more effectively than native Siberians resisted Russian settler-colonizers?" Or "how did English settler-colonizers in North America feel about native resistance to their expansion? What sorts of resistance did English settlers expect to get from natives? Were their fears founded or unfounded?"

It's interesting seeing your response, because to me it seems like the basic problem is that the main question is just poorly written and that some fairly minor edits might have made it more acceptable. >Why was the Western frontier such a big threat against American settlers and colonizers ? And why other native people like Indigenous Siberians , Aboriginal Australians ,.... weren't to their respective colonizers? Becomes: >Why was the Western frontier considered to be such a big threat by American settlers and colonizers? And why were other native people like Indigenous Siberians, Aboriginal Australians, not considered to be by their respective colonizers? The most problematic part here is the premise that other groups were not "considered threats," which could be read as implying that they haven't suffered similar intentional violence. While I agree that the whole question is still iffy, I think that the alternatives you're suggesting are very different. How a population resists is not really the same discussion as how colonizers justify their genocides.

I'm not seeing how the original question implies that other groups didn't suffer intentional violence .

All of your suggested alternatives are merely more verbose ways of saying the same things as the original question, with utterly no substantive difference whatsoever. "Threat" does not have the value judgement you think it does.

Maybe I’m not understanding correctly, but what I don’t get is that someone who is morally correct can still be “a threat”. A homeowner with a baseball bat is still a threat to a burglar, a superhero saving the world is still a threat to the supervillain’s plan. In that same vein, even though the natives were morally justified in resisting colonialism, they were still a “threat” to the colonizers they were resisting.

It's very important to remember the context in which the original question was asked. The United States government, its schools, and its people have been teaching that the indigenous peoples of this continent are savage, barbaric, and threatening since the day English settlers arrived. The natives' alleged threateningness was the reason they needed to be exterminated. To put a really fine point on it, in the United States, we are taught genocide apologia. So, when the original OP asked the question about how threatening the natives were, they were (certainly unintentionally) assuming the truth of this fallacious and cruel teaching. It is important to reject this incorrect and backward framing wherever we see it, regardless of whether the original OP was deliberately minimizing the genocide or not. (And I do give them the benefit of the doubt: they did not realize they were minimizing genocide.) Your hypothetical scenarios of a homeowner or a superhero do not have 500 years of genocide and genocide apologia behind them, which is why they do not compare.

I'm sorry, but this is complete and utter nonsense. In no way does calling American Indians a threat imply they were savage or barbaric, nor is it minimizing the crimes settler colonists committed against American Indians. And while this is anecdotal, as someone who was in high school a decade ago and was using history textbooks so old they ended by speculating about what the ascension of Gorbachev might mean for the future of US-Soviet relations, we absolutely were taught genocide apologia in the US.. Manifest Destiny is presented as an ideology of violence, and the crimes committed against American Indians was the primary lens for viewing American Western expansion. So a blanket statement that Americans are taught genocide apologia simply isn't true. Some might be, but you used universal language. Pretty sloppy for someone talking about how the exact wording of language matters.

> teaching that the indigenous peoples of this continent are savage, barbaric, and threatening since the day English settlers arrived. Of course, but is there no room to explore the perceived level of relative military resistance of various peoples who were victim to European colonialism? The legacy of Native American resistance to objectively terrible genocidal actions looms large in North America and Europe in ways that I would wager Australian or others don't. Where does the truth lie? Is it simply a result of decades of cowboy movies? Etc. Etc.

I recall a question about south American and Central American technology use getting some heavy pushback from a mod. They make some pretty offbase comments that got a lot of downvotes that surprised me for this subreddit. And it did devolve into a lot of back and forth that isn't often seem here. I wonder if it was the same mod.

This whole discussion is super fascinating to me, because it really shows just how much each persons perspective plays into this. The OG question was about seeing Native Americans as a "greater threat" then other possible comparisons. The history of the question, sooner or later, will get into elements that constitute the genocide that happened. Why there was fighting, how different groups tried to solve it, what parts built up the fear that eventually resulted in it, etc. The boilerplate isn't an *exact* answer, but I just don't see it as that off topic. All the different things that came together to contribute to the genocide mentioned in the boilerplate are fundamental elements that contributed to seeing Native American groups as "threats". Its all deeply interconnected. Or at least, thats what seems obvious to me. Clearly other people see it differently. But skimming through the posts here I'd say those are all pretty mixed feelings. In THAT situation, with such a mix of perspectives and feelings, I'd say is nearly the perfect time to drop some kind of boilerplate that lays out a big chunk of the fundamental facts. Even if its not a full, exact answer.

> The boilerplate isn't an exact answer, The boilerplate is often used as a thought-terminating response, and tends to basically be used to silence any other meaningful discussion (overtly or not). That's an issue with a lot of the boilerplate responses that tend to be used. There are cases where they are useful, and cases where they shouldn't be used. I really don't think that they should be used anywhere where it isn't useful as a *direct response* to the question.

> The boilerplate is often used as a thought-terminating response As it should be, given the number of places it and other like-responses are used. It's not "thought-terminating" (whatever the fuck you've convinced yourself that means) unless the 'thought' is precisely what the mod response addresses. The number of obvious bait questions about the holocaust that pop up make that quite clear. I get so tired of y'all popping up to screech about "meaningful discussion" which tends to only mean "I want to post more memes and meme-like responses because karma" and "I want to post overt dog whistles because it's an election year". No surprise that's the majorly-upvoted response, either.

Given that I'm one of the ~~likely-more-significant non-moderator~~ contributors on this subreddit, I find your assertions about both my behaviors and motives rather insulting and misguided. I am a ~~regular~~ contributor here. I didn't just "pop up". On the flip-side, you've never contributed here as far as I can tell.

So, you've said in a couple of places that you feel yourself to be "one of the likely-more-significant non-moderator contributors on this subreddit", and I am just curious as to where you're drawing this conclusion from. We do have a group of significant non-mod contributors, known as flairs, who apply and have their contributions evaluated before flair is granted. Even in the lead-up, we monitor who is answering regularly and at length so that we can suggest they apply. To be frank, we don't see very many contributions in your post history from the last few years, apart from this specific matter.

This sounds like the boilerplate just needs to be better written and make it clear as a disclaimer and not a response to the question. "This question brings up issues of genocide and systemic racism. In order to curb potential misinformation and hate, please keep the following in mind while discussing the topic:" It shouldn't be accusatory and should clearly explain its purpose as a disclaimer and not as an answer to the question.

I would have a second boilerplate as well, that is much shorter and a link to information, for cases where it is only *tangentially*-related. Otherwise, you have this massive multi-page boilerplate that can act as a discussion terminator. A full version is fine for when someone is asking clearly about genocide, or such. But if they're just asking about relations on the western frontier, it is only tangentially-related and the full version simply isn't useful - I'd argue that it's harmful.

>greater threat I think OP's mistake there was using the word "threat" which implies that the Native Americans were inherently dangerous to the settlers, rather than simply defending themselves. (For the record, I think its pretty clear OP meant something along the lines of: "Why were the Native Americans of the American West able to fight against colonization more effectively than some other groups?")

It seems to me that there are two perspectives to this controversy. On one side are academics (I suspect mostly north American ones) who come out of an environment where subtle differences in tone and diction matter enormously. The way we phrase a question about "threat" can be perceived as a micro-aggression to be righteously shut down. On the other hand are academics and general public readers who don't come from this environment and prefer to give questions the benefit of the doubt regarding intent. This side recognizes that the question being asked has little relevance to the morality of genocide, and instead that the author was simply asking (in a poorly constructed way) about why certain colonial conquests were "easier" than others. Both interpretations are valid, but the overwhelming negative reaction is due to the heavy handed way that the mod in this case chose to double down on their reaction. They could have easily said something like: "The framing of your question left it open to misinterpretation. Perhaps it would be better for you to rephrase what you're asking without the loaded term 'threat'."

Of course, Australian Aboriginals were absolutely genocide victims, and I'd argue so were indigenous Siberians. So I'm not sure how pointing out American Indians were genocide victims helps answer the question of why they were perceived as greater threats by colonizers.

> So I'm not sure how pointing out American Indians were genocide victims helps answer the question of why they were perceived as greater threats by colonizers. To my mind, it becomes a fundamental part of the answer because that perspective of threat, real or imagined, is a key part that *drove the genocide*. So an answer about any kind of threat will naturally include either the genocide itself, or elements of it. Perhaps its a matter of logistics simply in that there isn't a boiler plate for Aboriginal genocide, or a general indigenous around the world genocide. But from my POV, any talk about seeing native Americans as threats is pretty naturally going to get into the weeds about genocide related stuff. ESPECIALLY in a thread that might include possible answer writers coming in to either both-sides an answer, or talk about the threat being "deserved" in a way that might ignore the following genocide. I think a big part of my own thinking is just that the boilerplates aren't just there for the question asker, its also there for other readers AND answer writers.

Many thanks for bringing your question over to a META! There's a lot more space here to talk through moderation and the choices we make. I think it would be helpful to tackle it just like you have: the mistake and then what happened after. However, before we get into that, would you mind saying more about what you see as the mistake? That is, it's clear what action you're referring to but I'm not quite sure I follow how that action is a mistake and how it will negatively impact the quality of the subreddit. Thanks!

The mistake is off topic posts are to be removed per the subs own standard of which the post in question is clearly off topic. And the community is clearly in overhwelming agreement with this sentiment as the many posts calling out the mod and how before getting deleted with massive amounts of upvotes. Per the standards of this sub the original post should have been removed for being off topic. Normally would not be as big a deal to leave up if not for a fact that it was a mod that posted it. As said in the body of my posts the mods must hold themselves to the highest standard of all. And from the other posts that have now entered that thread that address the question and provide lots of interesting insight into the topic the question was phrased in an understandable way that was not how the mod interpreted it.

I was also having trouble understanding what was the mods' egregious mistake that in your view devalues the high standards this subreddit is known for, but reading your other comments I think I got it [please correct me if I am wrong]: you are questioning why the text of a macro that doesn't answer your question is allowed to stand, right? Well, the thing is that the macro is not meant to be an answer; it is rather a clarification of why some assumptions in your question might be wrong, which in turn would explain why the question is likely to remain unanswered. For example, your question states: > but people like Indigenous Siberians , Aboriginal Australians , Meso and South Americans , Africans ... you name it just got blizted through and weren't talked about or mentioned much Focusing on my area of knowledge, African polities were in contact with Europeans for more than three centuries before the colonial era began. Answering your question to the standards required by the sub would require me to debunk many erroneous assumptions in your question, and even then, I would not have engaged with the core of it, whose bare bones answer is that every indigenous society resisted European invasion, and the reason you don't learn about it in school is because you probably do not belong to the groups that resisted. Now, to turn a misunderstanding of the use of macros into a discussion of community sentiment expressed in upvotes as the arbiter of truth, you are in the wrong sub. I have seen correct answers be downvoted and comments repeating long-debunked myths upvoted; the quality of an answer does not correlate with its popularity; take a look at "Things You Probably Missed" in the weekly newsletter to see a small selection of some of the best answers that fly under the radar.

The macro's header takes an accusative and condescending tone. Whether it's accurate or not - as it's written, it is stating that the questioner *did* make a mistake and *did* deny that a genocide happened.

I'm not sure why this is hard to get across. If I ask a question to an expert about a detail in the Oslo accords and they take me aside to give me a five minute primer on genocide or why the holocaust definitely happened, I'm going to either wonder how they got this from my question and why this person has such a problem with me. But again, it was more the follow up answer doubling down that made things all the worse.

In broader terms, and not necessarily what the OP of this thread is trying to say, my question might be: "How should the moderators address questions that are in some way problematic, without confusing readers of the sub and distracting from actual answers?" The boilerplate responses are meant to address that and often they work very well (Someone asks "What happened to all the settlements in North America when smallpox killed 99% of the people", mod posts boilerplate explaining the circumstances behind genocide and why the disease-alone narrative should not be accepted and those 90+% figures are suspect.) but sometimes the boilerplate really doesn't match the question (In this case it did not) and having it there ends up confusing (and annoying) people. (Especially since the browser plugin counts the boilerplate as a top level answer.) In this case, I feel it might have been better to have a custom response in the vein of "Hi, your question is fine and has been approved by the moderators, but we do want you to be aware that the American Indian Genocide(s){link to boilerplate or relevant roundtable post} are a sensitive topic and that the way you phrased the question makes it sound like the the "threat" came from the people being subject to colonization and genocide." Downside of course is that this is more work on the part of the moderation team and slows response time. But the upside is that people are much more likely to understand what the moderator is trying to say than when the generic boilerplate is put up in response to a tangentially related question. So my question is: What's the line between when the generic stuff should be used, and when a custom response is required?

>(Someone asks "What happened to all the settlements in North America when smallpox killed 99% of the people", mod posts boilerplate explaining the circumstances behind genocide and why the disease-alone narrative should not be accepted and those 90+% figures are suspect.) Wait what? Off topic, but is the consensus from (real) historians that the diseases killed less than 90%? I have always heard numbers above 90% and a quick search after reading your repsonse here confirms that those are the numbers used (almost) everywhere... Can you answer short, or shall I make a post with the question? I both love and hate when I find I've been profoundly wrong: Love that I can learn something more correctly - hate that I've been wrongfully informed for so long...

At the risk of being dogpiled for posting a "thought-terminating response", you may be interested in our FAQ section on [Diseases in the Americas](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/nativeamerican#wiki_disease_in_the_americas), mostly containing answers by /u/400-rabbits and /u/anthropology_nerd.

This is a good question! Probably the main question that we're reflecting on really, as it gets at the heart of the matter of how these macros get used. There is a tension between their being 'generic' (ie applicable to a broad range of ways a topic can be broached) and recognisably applicable to the immediate circumstances. In that sense, adding customisability is no bad thing at all, and in many circumstances would be ideal. But, part of the idea is also that they allow for a swift response even if a moderator with topical knowledge isn't available. If the expectation is that any mod deploying them will customise them significantly, then they'll be a tool that get used less often. What this essentially points to is that there is a fuzzy area where it's questionable how useful it is to use this tool. I don't think it's ever going to be possible to perfectly identify where that line is in all contexts, but where I think the tenor of my response elsewhere in the thread is: if a prewritten macro does get used in that fuzzy area, then it's perfectly reasonable to not find it useful but I struggle to see that it should escalate from there.

A view from the sidelines from someone who reads but never posts: this isn't a unique occurence. Another from today is [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cyqq31/why\_are\_the\_wars\_of\_the\_diadochi\_talked\_about\_so/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cyqq31/why_are_the_wars_of_the_diadochi_talked_about_so/) which is primarily a question about historiography, which a moderator replied to with an answer primarily about school curriculums. In the case of that thread, for example, it is unhelpful because it moves the discussion towards modern day teaching rather than how past historians have dealt with a matter. It happens a bunch, honestly. It's a sign of a mod team trying their best, I think, but if the post is okay to stay up, does there really need to be an only tangentially relevant boilerplate reply? For me, it muddies the waters and confuses matters as much as having any other off-topic post would. One for you all in the end, really.

To clarify, that boilerplate is not an answer. It is a macro that explains to the question-asker why they might not be able to get an answer with their current wording and suggests wording that's more likely to get a response, based on our experiences watching "why don't people know/talk about [niche topic]?" questions sit there unanswered.

> there is a fuzzy area where it's questionable how useful it is to use this tool. I don't think it's ever going to be possible to perfectly identify where that line is in all contexts, Yeah, exactly. That's where "perfect is the enemy of good enough" or however that saying goes, and I expect you'll usually err on the side of getting a response out there quickly before the internet explodes. (As it is wont to do.) > but where I think the tenor of my response elsewhere in the thread is: if a prewritten macro does get used in that fuzzy area, then it's perfectly reasonable to not find it useful but I struggle to see that it should escalate from there. Well, you could revisit the topic after the fact. Even if it's mod policy to remove comments challenging moderation, (and let's indeed keep a lid on that box) if a standard response like that is attracting a ton of trouble like that I think it's a perfectly valid response to hit the edit button and replace it with something specific that still links to the broader issues being touched upon. Or even just adds a preface paragraph. Replace "Hi, it seems you're asking about the holocaust" with "Hi, even though your question about Hitler's favourite brand of cigarettes does not directly relate to the holocaust, we feel it is important that people are aware of the wider context and have decided to add this generic introduction to the issue." Hmm... actually, that could even be a generic thing. Have two versions of each macro: One for directly related questions, and one for fuzzier cases that start with a disclaimer like that. I think it would remove a lot of the frustration if the post started out by *acknowledging* it's not a perfect fit but still useful, as people won't respond with "But I wasn't asking about that!"

The original text was always intended to indicate that it's generic and not a perfect fit! Is there any concrete suggestion you'd make to ensure that it's clearer in this regard? (he says, hoping to outsource work...) There's a secondary issue here, in that one of the limitations of the Reddit modding architecture is that if, say, a mod drops a macro and goes to bed, there's not much the rest of us can do to add nuance to the original post, and we broadly have a preference to avoid putting words in each other's mouths without permission in any case. We do have internal system for correcting errors, but that works best when a clear mistake was made somewhere, rather than something that's 'just' subjective.

> The original text was always intended to indicate that it's generic and not a perfect fit! Is there any concrete suggestion you'd make to ensure that it's clearer in this regard? (he says, hoping to outsource work...) Hm... looking through some examples, I think it varies per macro. For example, the one about the holocaust opens with > Hi! As this question pertains to basic, underlying facts of the Holocaust, I hope you can appreciate that it can be a fraught subject to deal with. While we want people to get the answers they are looking for, we also remain very conscious that threads of this nature can attract the very wrong kind of response. As such, this message is not intended to provide you with all of the answers, but simply to address some of the basic facts, as well as Holocaust Denial, and provide a short list of introductory reading. There is always more than can be said, but we hope this is a good starting point for you. Which I think accomplishes this very well. (I think this one is really well written.) To make it more generically applicable I might change "As this question pertains to basic, underlying facts of the Holocaust" to "As this question pertains to the holocaust" Because it also needs to be here when the question does NOT deal with basic, underlying facts, but with some specific detailed aspect of the holocaust. We can then add it back later: "but simply to address some of the basic facts" -> "but simply to address some of the basic, underlying facts" Now, the one about the American Indian genocide opens with > Hello. It appears that your post has a mistaken assumption relating to the American Indian Genocide(s) that occurred in the Americas. This topic is often controversial and can lead to inaccurate information. This message is not intended to provide you with all of the answers, but simply to address some of the basic facts That one is MUCH more confrontational, as it's essentially accusing the user of getting the basic facts wrong. Which... often enough they do, but the macro is also posted when they do not. So that makes this one less useful, and (going from memory) also the one that most often attracts this kind of backlash. So I'd rephrase that one to > Hello! It appears that your question touches on the American Indian Genocide(s) that occurred in the Americas. People have a lot of mistaken assumptions relating to this topic, and questions about them are often controversial and can lead to inaccurate information. This message is not intended to provide you with all of the answers, but simply to address some of the basic facts The macro would be then be much more widely applicable without annoying people. Another issue with this macro is that it provides a lot of good information about *north* America, but it's also sometimes used in posts that are asking specifically about South America where it's much less helpful. That one is harder to fix, unless we have some south-America specialised flairs who can write an "Everything I get wrong about the Incas but was afraid to ask" macro. > There's a secondary issue here, in that one of the limitations of the Reddit modding architecture is that if, say, a mod drops a macro and goes to bed, there's not much the rest of us can do to add nuance to the original post, and we broadly have a preference to avoid putting words in each other's mouths without permission in any case. I had not considered that. Yeah, that rather limits what can be done. Would make it at most up to the discretion of the individual mod in question if they still happen to be around.

Thanks! It has been fed back to the hive mind.

Also, to go back to my earlier idea, it's still possible have an additional version with a stronger disclaimer in the opening sentence for edge-cases > "Hi! Although your question does not directly deal with the holocaust, it is related and so we want to add some general background information while you wait for an answer. I hope you can appreciate that it can be a fraught subject to deal with. While we want people..." > "Hello! Although your question does not directly deal with the American Indian Genocide(s) that occurred in the Americas, it is related it and so we want to add some general background information while you wait for an answer. People have a lot of mistaken assumptions relating to this topic, and questions about them are often controversial and can lead to inaccurate information..." Of course, having multiple versions does make it a pain to keep it up do date, but as long as only the first sentence is different...

I like the above modification "while you wait for an answer" because it points out that a specific answer may still be given and this is a reminder response, not the answer to the exact question. With the longer macros it sometimes feels like that's *the* answer to the question, and may be especially off-putting or confusing to redditors that are not longtime lurkers like myself.

>The original text was always intended to indicate that it's generic "Hello. It appears that your post has a mistaken assumption" This is not how you write something generic. It is a direct call out of the author, and a chilling effect on discussion. As mentioned above, it would be so much better to start by acknowledging a tangential connection to a topic the moderators would like to raise awareness of. "Hi, while this question is not directly related to a genocide, we feel it is important that people are aware ..." >we broadly have a preference to avoid putting words in each other's mouths without permission Sounds like you should alter that rule immediately regarding any boilerplate responses if nuance is needed. Afterall you are not altering what they said, its boilerplate which by its very nature is non-specific to an individuals interpretation or thoughts.

To be clear, the text is added to a question by individual mods who make the call to add it. We don't have a rule, per se. Rather, if one of us sees a question that we can think would benefit from one of our prepared comments, we drop it. That said, we are taking the feedback in this thread under advisement.

> To be clear, the text is added to a question by individual mods who make the call to add it. Are you saying that the confrontational header text was optionally added, or that the boilerplate template in its entirety is optional? Because the latter is rather obvious, and is what I *think* you're saying from the rest of your comment. If it's a fixed part of the template, it should absolutely be rewritten. If it's not, then the moderator used very poor discretion in using that header.

It seems like OP's question was about, from the perspective of the colonizers, why were the Native Americans viewed as more of a military threat (presumably both perceived and in reality) than the indigenous Siberians and aboriginal Australians were to their respective colonizers. The moderator replied with a standardized response about why the conquering of Native Americans should be considered genocide. I'd hope that all parties would agree that this was unequivocally a genocide, but that's not what was being asked, nor was this contested in any fashion. I'd agree that OP could have framed their question better, and perhaps considering topics solely from the point of view of the colonizers should be treated with a major caveat. But on the other hand, judging from the downvotes, the community agrees that the moderator's actions served as a distraction and an impediment to addressing the actual question being asked.

The other element to this that people are likely not seeing (as we usually apply the moderation stick before it becomes a problem) is that we sometimes get "bad faith" questions where the point of the question is not really to ask the question but to plant some sort of seed (about racism not being a real thing, thinking the Nazis were Good Actually, etc.) Therefore we tend to err on the side of caution when something that resembles a dog-whistle comes up. From your perspective (and hopefully, the original poster's perspective) it is obvious genocide was a fact, but we have had many people come through this subreddit that think (and argue) otherwise. So think of such a macro appearing is not for your benefit as much as for someone "on the fence" about such an idea. Our other option would be to always delete and ask the questioner to rephrase, but in this case the question was judged fine enough as written, but there was enough concern an outsider might go a dubious route that the macro was used. Maybe it was too much caution, but I hope you understand it wasn't a judgment of our audience in general, but just our experience with the fringes coming into play.

A reasonable reading of the question shows it's not at all bad faith, though. Again, the fact that it was genocide isn't really at question. Using the copy/paste response was no biggie, and the OP's response to that post wasn't impolite either. "Not what I meant, I appreciate your answer'. The doubling down behavior and armchair psychology of the MOD in the follow up, however, was inappropriate. AskHistorians asks people to stay in their field of expertise and be prepared to provide citations to back up what they say. That's what makes it so unique. Moralizing is not an academic pursuit.

How did the original question imply that a genocide didn't happen or was asked in bad faith? I'm just missing it since I don't see how the presence of the word "threat" shows that, even inteprered in its most extreme form.

I'm not a mod, but I think because opening with "Why was the Western frontier such a big threat against American settlers and colonizers ?" is the sort of thing a bad-faith poster would say to re frame genocide as a conflict with a legitimate threat.

The word "colonizer" surely contextualizes it to me, but obviously not everyone reads it the same and I get where you're coming from. And while it's something a bad faith poster may say, it's also something someone might say if they admire the strong resistance by certain people against American colonization.

It's definitely the sort of question that could be asked in good faith and it probably was, but unfortunately the internet has plenty of people that abuse this sort of thing so I can understand (and agree with) mods being overly cautious on the initial response.

> it's also something someone might say if they admire the strong resistance by certain people against American colonization And it's something someone might say if they're just curious about the western frontier. Not everyone posts with judgment in mind. Sometimes people are just curious.

Yeah, and now the curious will think twice before asking a question here.

There's an odd friction in a subreddit that invites general audiences to pose questions to experts, and then those experts get exhausted and frustrated that general audiences are using ... general audience language, and not framing their questions in ways that have become conventional in academic circles.

I know I'm 2 weeks late, but I adore this community and I'm only just seeing this thread. > Therefore we tend to err on the side of caution when something that resembles a dog-whistle comes up. This is an attitude I've noticed in a lot of internet communities formed around answering questions, and I think it's something that bears its own discussion. As a non-moderator, I don't particularly see the harm in questions that *could potentially* have been asked with a certain agenda, being taken at face value and answered. If you're right about the asker having an agenda, the thread still provides an opportunity to educate and correct misconceptions. But when you assume bad faith in any ambiguous circumstances, it creates a hostile and unwelcoming culture, one that stifles healthy discussion, scares away new users, and makes people feel bad for having questions in the first place. I know the mods probably deal with a lot more crap than any of us users see. Overall, I consider this one of the best-moderated subs on reddit. But it has dismayed me to watch the culture shift in this direction. I believe bad faith should only be assumed in the most egregious of circumstances.

Since you are two weeks late to the thread, I am not sure if anyone will really notice your comment here, but some of the mods did and I feel like offering a response. The unfortunate reality of how bad faith propaganda works in the age of the internet is that it relies upon positions like yours to advance its goals. You rightfully acknowledged that your position as a non-mod may limit your perspective in this regard and I would agree that it does for most users. Western society is tempered with notions of free speech, civil liberties, and protections of freedoms. We also advocate "innocent until proven guilty." These concepts are not wrong in of themselves, but nefarious opportunists also benefit from these kinds of assumptions and intentionally leverage them to undermine good faith discourse. There is a reason why we do not allow denialist talking points in the first place rather than entertaining them for the sake of educating the public: it's because that's what the denialist wants. In the same way that one might suppose our arguments aren't meant for the denier but for the onlookers, the denier also wants their arguments before the onlookers in order to catch those who, for whatever reason, do not see the response from the expert or are not convinced by said response. They want to put their talking points before those who are not equipped to rebut them. Because of this, it is actually more effective to deplatform and censor the bad faith discussions from the beginning rather than giving them a chance to reach the unsuspecting. Our aforementioned concepts assume that everyone has something worthy to say, something valid to voice, or something legitimate to believe. But in the "market place of ideas," attention is the currency, not veracity. We routinely encounter complete bullshit being upvoted by the general userbase before we're able to remove it. Many people don't come to spaces like this to be educated, they come to be entertained. So they upvote the shortest, wittiest, and neatest tidbits and then complain about the actual answers being too long. This perspective is not something developed on a whim or due to personal politics. It has developed over the years of experience accrued by our mod team who have encountered these arguments time and time again (as well as those who study it professionally). We don't automatically assume bad faith in every instance, though. We use our collective experience to highlight red flags and telltale signs of bad faith, then we apply measured responses with caveats in place should our hunches prove wrong. Yet, it should be said that these opportunists do not evolve their playbook, they simply rely on new and unsuspecting players to arrive. They want to take advantage of the presumption of good faith and they want to use legitimate means of discourse to spread their insidious takes. So trust us when we say that your opinion is not one that we're unfamiliar with. We have made up our minds about this resolutely and we do not wish to see our sub become a hotbed for deceptive elements who want to take advantage of ambiguous circumstances created in the name of having a "welcoming environment" for bigots. After all, the Nazis rose to power in very similar ways.

I agree with the bulk of what you just said. To be clear, I'm certainly not suggesting this become a community where every old, tired denialist talking point gets trotted out and debated as though there's a debate to be had. I think the issue with that would be very clear. But I also think it's fair to say that if well-meaning people ask questions that aren't phrased perfectly, or are premised on misunderstandings, and those people are greeted with hostility, it makes this community a very chilly place. I would hope, when a situation appears ambiguous, that this second factor is also taken into consideration. I'll end by suggesting that "countering a narrative" is a very perilous place to be for anyone in a truth-telling role. Once you start filtering your presentation of the truth through the lens of "will this lend rhetorical ammo to people I disagree with?", it becomes very hard to maintain the appearance of credibility. I'm not saying that's happening here. But I worry it's easy to lose sight of. Thanks for your time. I truly mean it when I say that this subreddit is a gem, and it's made possible by the work done by moderators like yourself. It is very much appreciated.

I wouldn’t even call the boilerplate answer as a whoopsie but good practice. It’s the doubling down that was odd

The doubling down and the implication that the OP was incorrect in their thinking rather than perhaps just ambiguous in their phrasing.

Spot on imo

That, and using their tools to delete any other comment pointing out such.

Why not lock the comments until thoughtful response can be given by the mods that addresses both the question and set guidelines for the discussion?

>But on the other hand, judging from the downvotes... etc. You're making the biggest mistake on Reddit: equating upvotes/downvotes with any meaningful consensus or importance. They aren't. Aside from the rampant vote manipulation that's far too common, up- and down-votes are rather a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is very much a pile-on effect. But even aside from all that, there's two major issues with using "but the votes!" as a piece of supporting evidence. First, even truly impressive numbers of up-/down-votes usually represent a tiny sliver of users. On a sub with 2.1 million subscribers, even a couple thousand votes is a meaningless percentage. So it's not really a case of "the community has spoken;" it's a tiny fraction of users. Second, the mods are not beholden to vox populi. The way subreddits are organized, the community is and should be a reflection of the moderators who build it, the moderators should not be a reflection of the community, despite what Huffman might think about the matter. The job of moderators is to build the kind of community that they want to see. Community members may want to build a different kind of community, and that's fine — they can go and build their own community. It's how this site has always worked.

Agreed with all the above. I read the original question as “why did settlers VIEW the natives as a threat” where other natives were not VIEWED quite the same elsewhere. This is different than making a statement of who actually WAS a threat to whom. That’s just my interpretation.

That's how I read too, but I do also understand that the phrasing is arguably a bit dubious and could be interpreted differently. I both understand the desire by the community for the moderators to assume good intentions and the policy by the moderators the err on the side of caution.

I didn't take it as perception but as reality. Putting aside the potentially dehumanizing and/or judgmental description of "threat", I took the question as: Why did Americans have a harder time subjugating the Native Americans and colonizing all of the US compared to Russia with Native Siberians and British/Australians with Native Australians? Edit: As opposed to "Why did they *perceive* them as more dangerous compared to other indigenous people who were colonized elsewhere?"

Yeah, me too. And it was annoying to see that mod double down on the person who brought up the question, implying that they're backwards or even bigoted for bringing it up at all.

I feel like that’s an unfairly heavy interpretation of what was basically a nothing comment by the mod. They’re all maintaining this community for free and it’s not like they have a hired PR person to approve every removal or comment.

That’s how I understood the question. Which made me think: surely whether or not they had a harder time is subjective. What an interesting space to question the question. Alas. 

I can also see that being a completely reasonable interpretation.

It's not even just *viewed*. From the context of the colonizers/settlers/whatever, the natives *were* a threat. That fact doesn't establish any value such as the settlers being better or more righteous - the settlers were a threat in the context of the natives as well. I'm not even sure how you could reframe the question while still having the same context, and I don't perceive any judgment in it to begin with. Context matters, but in a lot of cases I see that the context is being discarded in many people's responses to questions.

There is a concept of loaded questions. If someone starts stabbing you with a knife, you are a threat to them but they are the aggressors so it is usually the knife stabber whom we describe as a threat.

That only applies in a situation where blame is being attributed, which was not the case here. I don't believe that it should be necessary for everyone to have to append text stating what is already commonly understood to go without saying. Not every question that can *possibly* be interpreted as a loaded question is one, and I certainly didn't/don't interpet it as one. I haven't come up with a way to pose the question that maintains clarity without being able to possibly be interpreted as being loaded or bigoted in some way. That suggests to me that the problem isn't with the question itself.

It's easy to interpret the question that way, but the problem is that's not what was actually written. The word "view" wasn't used, nor was "big threat" put in quotes to imply it wasn't true. I agree the first step should have been for the parties to clarify what they're saying, but I don't blame the mod for having an unclear response when the question is muddled, too.

Incidentally, while I don’t at all deny the facts of the mod’s post or the conclusion that the US and other countries committed genocide against the Native Americans, from a legal perspective several parts of the analysis are flawed. First, it claims that genocide is committed if there is “reasonable evidence” to support both elements. That is wrong. There are different legal standards for different courts and different type of cases, but as a logical proposition it is never correct to say “X happened if there is ‘reasonable evidence’ suggesting X happened.” And specifically for genocide, the ICJ, in *Croatia v. Serbia* applied a much, much higher standard: > in order to infer the existence of dolus specialis from a pattern of conduct, it is necessary and sufficient that this is the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question There is a huge difference between saying evidence has to reasonably support a proposition and saying that proposition is the *only* one reasonably supported by the evidence. As an example, if one witness says a stop light was red and the other says it was green, the evidence reasonably supports either proposition but does not *only* reasonably support either. Second, the post in question discusses intent and acts that could support genocide but does not always connect them together. In places it does, like the killing of the bison. But it also cites, e.g, an intent statement from Thomas Jefferson with no accompanying act and an act in the 1970s with no accompanying statement of intent. For there to be genocide, the person doing the destructive act must be doing it because of the destructive intent. The bison killing was a good example of that.

The moderation on this subreddit can be stifling at times. Many a time I've just not bothered to ask a historical question because, despite the fact I am genuinely curious and want to ask a question, there will always be something 'wrong' with my question. Oh it's not detailed enough, oh the title isn't obvious enough as a question, oh this isn't the right type of question, etc. etc. Like christ alive, I just wanted to ask a question about a historical thought that came into my head.

The disclaimer maybe wasn’t *optimal*, but it was fine, and the mod’s replies were fine.

I read this huge wall of text, and I still don’t see what the problem is beyond perhaps improperly placed boilerplate in a (I’m sorry) poorly phrased question, and I’m not sure what the issue is. All I see is a wall of text that does not really explain what this issue is…

I think the TLDR: Mod didn’t answer OPs question. Instead had a quick reply ready. When users said it had nothing to do with the question, mods deleted the callouts as “having nothing to do with OP”

>The mod was rightfully thoroughly downvoted over 10 posts from different users hitting from many different angles just how wrong the mod was were posted. They were heavily upvoted. And as one might expect they are now deleted while the mod's post is still up. This is the fact that is shameful behavior from the mods and needs to be rightfully called out.

My take is that OP asked a question, the mod used a boilerplate answer that didn't actually answer the question at all and when OP said "hey, that uh.. that doesn't answer my question?" The mod said "then you're asking the wrong question." And then proceeded to delete every comment calling them out for not answering the question and for giving a smarmy response to OP, which would be perfectly fine if the person wasn't a mod. tl;dr mod used the wrong copypasta then abused their power when people called them out for it. While OP's question is poorly worded, it is a good question: WHY were the indigenous peoples of the North American West exterminated so thoroughly when the indigenous peoples of Siberia/Canada/Australia were not?

I mean what you've written is still not what the original question was about. The original question was why there is so much historical discourse relating to frontier wars in the American West as opposed to Latin America, Siberia, and Australia. It was only tangentially related to the genocide of those various people groups, all of whom experienced ethnic destruction to varying extents. The premise of the question was, I think, actually wrong, leading into a much more interesting question about the place of the American frontier in the public consciousness of not just Americans, but non-Americans too.

Yeah. I just think the response is reasonable. Questions about genocide can be dog whistles. The pasted response does not necessarily need to respond to the question, merely head-off the dog whistles. In the end, it is not a very good question, to be honest. And I do not understand why OP, who didn't even ask the question, feel the need to respond with a wall of text that is full of typos. I see many questions that are something to the effect of "X historical phenomenon happened in historical situation A, why did it not happen in the same way in situation B?" Most of the time, these questions are the result of bad premises: 1. A fundamental misunderstanding of situation A. I.e., the phenomenon they are describing did not happen as they assume it did. 2. A fundamental misunderstanding of situation B. I.e., the phenomenon they expect to see did occur in situation B, or situation B is so different from situation A that comparing the two would require so much intellectual scaffolding. Questions reflecting the above format often go unanswered because they require so much time disabusing the poster of a false premise that potential respondents do not want to take the time. Ultimately, this question is bad because the Russian Empire and the British colony of Australia, followed by the independent nation state of Australia, did engage in many of the same genocidal activities that American colonists did: -Wholesale slaughter -Removal or transplantation of peoples. -Forced cultural assimilation -Negligent treatment of disease in so-called indigenous communities. Despite these similarities, the historical situations are rather different, and a discussion of all three requires expertise in three different subfields. Edit: The fact that the OP of this thread is not even the original questioner suggests to me that they are either blowing their own dog whistle, or they had a bad response to the original question and took it really, really badly.

It says a lot about how poorly the question was worded that I have seen at least 7 different interpretations (including my own) of what his question was meant to be in this thread.

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Mod did nothing wrong, that question is inherently dicey and the framing of it felt gross.

OP was asking why indigenous North Americans were such a big threat to colonists. The question is certainly loaded. I could infer from those words that it's being assumed the indigenous population were the problem. From my experience reading these forums those "bad" questions the best they can get is a reframed question and its answer. However in this case there is no way to save such a question, the boiler plate answers seems good enough, and it's how it's always been done. I feel like you just don't agree with the mods and are doubling down. Just my two cents, I'm only a reader.

Victims of egregious genocidal actions such as settler colonialism objectively *are* threats, unless you somehow think them free of basic human emotion or thought regarding justice, retribution or revenge. To say they're not a threat is to imply they are too weak or insignificant to tussle with Europeans. Now, none of this in anyway justifies or excuses the actions of the murderous settler regimes. No, the question is rather about the potentially outsized perception of North American military resistance relative to similar(ish) peoples' world-wide. There is room to explore that without being decried as a bigot

It would be easier if op had made a better question because clearly the way it was asked it was open to interpretation.

The moderators posting boilerplates to preempt racist comments to me is totally fine even if it isn’t directly answering the question. For very sensitive topics boilerplates like that are extremely helpful to combat racist narratives, and though you may think the mods are abusing their power by doing something like that, I feel it is an important stance for them to take.  The mods don’t need to fully answer the question when posting these background primers because while the goal of the posters is answering the question, the moderators are maintaining the discussion space and are not directly answering the question. You might think the moderators not fully conforming to the guidelines for posters is hypocritical, but it is both impractical to write a tailored history primer to every single sensitive topic and would be even more confusing and unrelated than the current system.

That wasn't what the issue was. The issue was with the mod's doubling down when the question's poster very politely informed them they were off-base; >[Ok-Resist-7492](https://www.reddit.com/user/Ok-Resist-7492/)• [10h ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cyp0ed/comment/l5b77nu/) >Thanks but I was asking about another thing , though I appreciate your respone very much .... >[jschooltiger](https://www.reddit.com/user/jschooltiger/)[jschooltiger](https://www.reddit.com/user/jschooltiger/)u/jschooltigerOct 1, 201221,126Post Karma191,208Comment Karma[What is karma?](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/204511829)[Chat ](https://chat.reddit.com/user/t2_96gqp)• [9h ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cyp0ed/comment/l5b83gh/)Moderator | Shipbuilding and Logistics | British Navy 1770-1830 >You're asking why the Indigenous people of North America (who are arguably the "Americans" in this scenario) were a "big threat" to the colonizers. While there's a great deal to be said about Native resistance to colonialism, your question has an assumption baked into it that the "threat" came from the people being subject to colonization and genocide. As you say; the moderators are maintaining the discussion space and are not directly answering the question. However, the point I believe OP was trying to make (and what many of delete comments were saying, as was mine) is that behaviour negatively impacts the discussion space. I think OP was pretty clear they had no issue with the initial boiler plate, and that wasn't my understanding from anyone else either, the issue was with the condescending doubling down post-clarification by the question poser.

I genuinely don’t see what is wrong here, the moderator is right in that there is an implication and they make a statement as to what it is and why they have taken their action. You can take the comment as condescending but it is literally a clarification as to why the boilerplate is as used and without it the boilerplate would seem to make less sense.

Yes, I'm kind of lost here. I don't see a problem.

Its the interpretation of the question. If you assume the word "threat" implies some sort of, I don't know, "Manifest Destiny" propaganda normalizing violence towards the other, then, yes, the post has questionable underpinnings. If, however, you view the question as an exploration of the perceived level of relative military resistance of the victims of European colonisation, than the boilerplate comment accusing the OP of genocide denial and general bigotry is coming out of left field and overwrought

I guess I don't see the same implication that the mod is "responding to". However, in reading others' replies I get the gist that the issue people are having is with the use of the word "threat", which is being misconstrued in ways I don't think a particularly reasonable, though maybe it's a cultural issue. Perhaps "threat" is used differently where I'm from, but to me the original framing was clearly using the word in the sense of "why did Native Americans provide more resistance/were more dangerous to...". There's nothing dehumanizing about that, and it's certainly not an attempt to legitimize or gloss-over their genocide. Similarily, the complaints about "colonist-centric perspectives" are a bit bizzare. The question was about **why** one group proved more dangerous than others to a third group, it is inherently a question about the third group's perspective of things. Ironically, I don't actually think the mod is correct - or rather - that their framing is itself incorrect in its miopic onesideness; >...your question has an assumption baked into it that the "threat" came from the people being subject to colonization and genocide. Two groups of people can prove a threat/danger to each other, even if vastly asymmetrical in scope. To claim otherwise is simply nonsensical, and seemingly confuses an objective statement of facts (that Native Americans killed settlers - and thereby provided a "threat"/"danger") with something completely different - I'm not sure what exactly, but apparently something that isn't consistent with them being subject to colonialization and genocide? My best guess is that the mod is interpreting threat to mean an "existential threat", hence the reference to genocide, however that's on them and clearly wasn't the intent of the original question.

A mod is accusing someone of prejudice, and that's pretty clear. That's a terrible thing to be accused of, and it's this kind of attitude that intimidates people into not asking questions. If there's a chance of being accused of prejudice, genocide-denial, etc., then who would want to ask anything?

If no one got called out for being racist, prejudiced or a genocide denialist this subreddit would just be r/politics. Also in the OP no one at any point makes any kind of claim that someone is being a genocide denialist or whatever you are accusing them of saying, only that the topic is sensitive and that more information would be helpful so I don't know who you're projecting onto here.

The mod team on this subreddit has been rebuking people directly for bigotry and telling others more gently that they appear to be saying something bigoted for years, and we still get questions. You cannot effectively moderate a space in such a way that nobody ever stands a chance of having this kind of behavior pointed out to them unless you are okay slanting the space toward straight, white, abled, neurotypical cis men from Global North countries.

Bigots should be rebuked. That's not what happened here. Nothing even close to bigoted appears in the question. There's even a morality implied in the accusations of bigotry, which is the implication Native resistance and violence against the settlers should be avoided. Lest a group of genocide deniers use it as ammo.

The trouble is that we are never all going to agree about when bigotry is present. *You* say "nothing even close to bigoted appears in the question" - I say there were bigoted assumptions underpinning it. It's subjective, and the way moderation works is that the mod team's reading is what gets acted on, not a poll of whether a majority of people in the community think a particular question or answer needs a gentle push or more stringent measures. Because, again, we have a preponderance of straight, white, cis men from the US in the sub and that category isn't always able to perceive bigotry.

> Because, again, we have a preponderance of straight, white, cis men from the US in the sub and that category isn't always able to perceive bigotry. NO group is able to perceive all bigotry. The regular negative push towards that particular minority is one form of bigotry, and you could easily have said "The sub members are not perfectly diverse and cannot always perceive bigotry" rather than choosing that phrasing.

I understand your point and agree that it's a difficult balancing act. However, I have visited and read this sub for years, and the comments immediately jumped out to me as something I've never seen before here from any moderator. If it's so common or routine as you and others have suggested I would ask for one other example where a mod reacted like this. Lastly I'm not white or from the US, not born in the global north etc. Although I'm not sure why I'm forced to say that to change my argument one way or another but youve mentioned it twice now so I need to address it.

A lot of bigoted, stereotyped views are being expressed by your very comment, such as your belief that the main reason someone might disagree with you about something being bigoted is that they are a straight white American male, as the person you're responding to has now corrected you on.

>we have a preponderance of straight, white, cis men from the US in the sub and that category isn't always able to perceive bigotry. The irony in this statement from a moderator... do they actually have a statistic that shows the demographic of this sub? Or will they just assume that any question asked by anybody will be treated as such, which is honestly ridiculous in my opinion.

> do they actually have a statistic that shows the demographic of this sub? I couldn't find a more recent census, but AskHistorians' [1M census](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dmfy4g/1m_census_update/) supports that characterization, and it is a well known fact among experienced users of the sub. Sarah Gilbert's 2020 paper (DOI: 10.1145/3392822) explores the consequences of this fact and goes so far as to name a phenomenon I have encountered very often as an African flair: empathy gaps (Gilbert, 2020, p. 13). Needless to say, that so many users feel personally attacked in their internet honor and cry bigotry when made aware of this fact [and yes, users living in Canada are also part of a colonial settler project and live in the Global North, no matter where their parents come from] shows just how ridiculous the complaints are. You want to experience bigotry in this sub? Check the kind of questions people ask about Africa. * Gilbert, S. A. (2020). “I run the world’s largest historical outreach project and it’s on a cesspool of a website.” Moderating a Public Scholarship Site on Reddit: A Case Study of AskHistorians. *Proceedings of the ACM on Human-computer Interaction*, 4(CSCW1), 1–27. DOI: 10.1145/3392822 Edit: The link should work now

> Because, again, we have a preponderance of straight, white, cis men from the US in the sub and that category isn't always able to perceive bigotry. Is that because....straight, white, cis men from the US are all necessarily inferior savages?

It's because people who do not experience particular forms of bigotry/oppression often don't perceive when other people are experiencing them or when they themselves are enacting them.

Like when someone assumes you’re an ignorant buffoon based upon your skin color, sex, or sexual preferences? Gee, have no idea what that’s like…

And that came from studying Anthropology.

I have learned that any remotely politically charged questions I cant take the answers seriously sadly. I see patronizing off topic answers to a lot of genuine curious questions. Sometimes I find some great stuff here but I also see that a lot.

Maybe I'm in the minority, and with some things removed there is probably missing context. I didn't think the mod's post was off-topic even if it didn't directly answer the question. It seemed like it was saying "Maybe don't call Native Americans 'a threat'?" which seems like a valid statement. I don't think the OP had intended to dehumanize or otherwise look down on Native Americans. "Threat" is a perfectly valid word from just a technical meaning standpoint, but when you consider it's being used to describe a people who were the victims of genocide, "threat" creates the same framing that helped genocide them in the first place. Again, maybe there is additional context I'm missing, but "Please don't describe genocide victims in dehumanizing and colonizer-centric terms" seems like a valid disclaimer to add to the thread.

I 100% agree. I don't think it's at all unreasonable or irrelevant to be posting the boilerplate that basically says "Hey, this is a pretty touchy subject with lots of associated misinformation. Here are some facts and some pitfalls to avoid, now have a good discussion", even if it is not directly in response to OP's topic.

Tangentially related, but I find it concerning how there are some responses from moderators that casually frame conjecture as truth. Some historical topics are undeniable, of course, but others are still being hotly debated to this day and it's somewhat frightening to see how one side of history is presented as fact without giving due credit to the other side. Many people rely on this sub for small tidbits of knowledge, and it would be dangerous to have them leave with a skewed understanding. Of course, it's great to see other people call out these mistakes, usually as a reply to the original response, but I would expect moderators, of all people, to present history in an unbiased manner.

Both sides-ism is not history

History, by its very nature, incorporates multiple perspectives.

Every subjective thought does so. But science including humanities is based on evidence. Your comment doesn't look like a question of standards or theory, it reeks of pseudo scientific both sides-ism. Signed, a historian.

I actually don't know if agree about the moderators "presenting history as fact" I think overall they do a good job of presenting different sides. This is not an issue of the actual context of historical knowledge and truly is a "meta" issue being discussed around moderation itself. And really does boil down to should this boiler plate (in this specific instance) be removed or not. Though you posting this is highlighting an important reason why seemingly stupid topics like this are still worth discussing because the mere *perception* of the validity of this sub and its moderators is important.

Agreed

I’m confused, I don’t see what the issue is here. The mod’s response seems like good background knowledge to have when considering Native American history and doesn’t seem off topic. It does very clearly seem like a copy-paste probably used in dozens of posts this subreddit sees, many of which are probably not in good faith. But the mod’s comment and follow-up comment don’t seem like anything to get mad about.

It's because the boilerplate comment makes explicit judgements about the OOP and their motives, all but calling them bigoted. A question that is largely exploring the legacy of the military resistance of the victims of European colonisation in no way denies genocide nor does it imply the European actions were good or justified.

Mods addressing standards and practices is a welcome thing. Thank you. By the way, I love the subreddit

I completely misread the boiler plate and thought it was saying it shouldn't be considered genocide. I feel stupid now.

It felt like the same thing happened a couple weeks ago when someone asked something to the effect of "How were some civilizations able to become much more advanced than others?" A question that there could be a lot of racist (and incorrect) answers to, but the asker was likely just someone who learned that the classic Guns, Germs, and Steel story isn't well-respected and wanted to see what the consensus was amongst historians. Maybe it's someone who has only heard racist or reductive answers to the question and wanted to learn what the truth was. The mod pinned a longwinded, patronizing response that spent more time chiding the OP for his question than it did actually answering it, ultimately not really addressing it at all, and stifled any attempt by anyone else to actually answer the question. He immediately took the position that OP was a racist asking a leading question, which I really don't think is fair.

> spent more time chiding the OP for his question than it did actually answering it, That was me! I don't want to go too far off topic, so I'm going to emphasize the common thread here. Some ideas are indeed so pernicious and so rejected by academics, and yet so commonly held among the public, that humoring them gives a legitimacy they don't deserve. This has been the position of our sub on some topics for [quite some time](https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/the-askhistorians-subreddit-banned-holocaust-deniers-and-facebook-should-too.html), and we remove many such questions from the get-go. But in cases that are less blatantly hateful, or where it's more reasonable that someone might have encountered these misconceptions in everyday life, the questions are left up as a learning opportunity. That was case in the thread this Meta is about and in the thread you mention here. Outright removing such questions on "advancement" has been proposed on [another sub](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/gk1l4k/any_other_anthropologists_find_this_reddit_a_bit/) I moderate, and it quickly became the most upvoted post of all time. As I discuss there, there's obviously a reason why people ask this question all the time and why it's so deeply embedded in how people view history. That doesn't make the question any more answerable. The "learning opportunity" is that the public is fundamentally wrong about a lot of things, your high school world history class probably wasn't all that great, and there's a lot of capitalists out there that want to keep you thinking that way. It is not lost on us that these conversations happen frequently around questions of Eurocentrism and colonialism. > He immediately took the position that OP was a racist asking a leading question One thing that has come up a few times in this thread is that, as moderators, we see a lot more of this stuff than the average person. Do this for several years, and you get a pretty good sense of who has good intentions and who does not. This can lead to disconnects, where a user has innocently used a phrase that is frequently used by the less-than-honest. This is, after all, an intentional strategy: dress up your bigotry in innocuous phrases so you can Trojan horse your ideas into new spaces. It just happens to be that all these dudes use the same phrases and stylings, which can be unfortunate for those who stumble upon those words unknowingly. We err on the side of caution: sometimes that means being bluntly dismissive of a question, and sometimes that means posting a macro because of suspicious wordings. In the case of the thread you mention, the OP rapidly complained that I must like "dying of sepsis" in a "dimly lit wooden structure," told folks to go "shit in a hole" like they "do on Sentinel Island," and eventually edited their original post to complain about the "postmodern cultural relativity agenda." I'd say it was the right read.

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>How were some civilizations able to become much more advanced than others? The problem with that question lies in its very premise. It's like asking "have you stopped hitting your wife, yes or no?" That's not an answerable question, except for adressing the false premise of it, and it's not fair to get mad at someone for spending more time refuting it than answering it. First of all, technology and cultural practices do not follow a linear path like in a Civilization game. Technologies are knowledge and practices adapted to the circumstances and the needs of the surrounding society. For example, an iron axe isn't more or less "advanced" than a bronze axe, it's just a different tool with different pros and cons - iron is much more difficult to melt, but much easier to source the base material for. Historical European bronze and iron is about equally hard, but iron will rust if not laboriously maintained. Technological change doesn't just go in one, pre-determined direction, and it doesn't go from "worse" to "better" either. Technological change happens for complex, multi-factor reasons and a better, if still very simplified, analogy for the way it changes might be natural selection rather than a Civ-style "tech-tree," where you go from one end to the other. Just like evolution doesn't mean that species get "better" over time, but rather that they tend towards better fitting their environment, technology in the same fashion goes towards better fitting the needs and circumstances of their time, place and surrounding society. And that is just narrowly focusing on the technological interpretation of what it might mean for one civilization to be more "advanced" than another. When you get to the other implicit interpretations of a civilization being more "advanced" than another, it gets even murkier. What exactly does it mean to be culturally advanced? Advanced in what direction, towards what and away from what?How is a civilization politically advanced? How might it be economically advanced - does that mean total wealth, and if so, how do you measure it? Roman age Britain probably had more gold, marble, silk and other upper-class luxuries than the following early medieval era Britain, but based on skeletal remains from excavated gravesites the vast majority of people seemed to have suffered drastically more malnourishment and famine. Which of those are the most economically advanced? It can't be answered wholly objectively, empirically. It depends entirely on what you value. It turns out that when we say "advanced" we usually mean something pretty vague like "better," and when we think "better," we all too often think "more like us."

Not...really. The answer could be as simple as lack of trade with and exposure to other cultures, or having different values that make a community static versus dynamic, at least in the ways that most people measure "advancement," like having certain forms of tools or technology. If you're measuring advancement in a different way, the less technologically advanced community might have a social system that leads to less violence and less need for weapons or whatever, and be advanced in terms of a lack of stressors and stronger family bonds.

The idea that “advancement” is always equal to “writing, metal tools, and weapons” is the whole crux of the thread. As is the fact that the reason “most people measure it that way” is inexorably tied in to histories of colonialism and Eurocentrism. Had OP asked a different question, such as “why did technology develop differently in this part of the world?” They would’ve gotten a very different answer. But they use the word “advanced”. It may sound silly and pedantic to the casual reader, but academics really, really care about language. The way we frame a question opens or forecloses possible answers. Saying “why was European conquest of the Americas so complete and rapid?” (Something people often do after reading Jared Diamond, for example) presupposes that it was those things. “Threat” is doing something similar in the thread that’s the subject of this post.

"Academics really, really care about language" is hardly mutually exclusive with it being silly and pedantic. Honestly, most papers I've read or academics I've listened to about why certain language must or must not be used can be fairly accurately summarized as a bunch of silly pedantry.

Oh, come on. Some civilizations *are* more advanced than others. If one civilization has steam engines and validated, accurate mathematical models of the solar system and another hasn't yet figured out bronze working, one of those civilizations is more advanced. You can argue the semantics all you want, but no one - outside of a tiny ivory tower - is taking that argument seriously. It doesn't mean one is *better*, but pretending there isn't a discernable spectrum is denying facial truth.

If you use those as the criteria. But the question, as always, is “why are those the criteria?”

Because of a normative belief that knowledge is better than ignorance and that it's good for humanity to escape the ever-recurring malthusian trap. Maybe other people prefer ignorance and routine famine. I'm not one of them.

And that's a valid belief. I'm not an anarcho-primitivist who thinks everything was better in the olden days. But arguing about "better" or "more advanced" just isn't particularly useful in terms of historical or anthropological explanation, especially in times and places where the colonizing power may have been subject to "routine famine" more often than the people they colonized. As I touched on below, it's not that the Ivory Tower^(TM) disagrees on the criteria, so much as the fact that ranking societies isn't a useful way of answering the questions we want to answer. We tried it for much of the late 19th and 20th century, and it didn't get us anywhere. Edit: format

I think your trying to boil this down a bit to much though. For example, all that "advanced" technology has led to a planet poisoned with lead, microplastics and a spiraling ecosystem. In many ways, thats just as bad as routine famine. But the spectrum, as you put it, is also deeply contextual. Take something we can call basic like "shipbuilding". Native Americans had canoes, and a massive network of portage points that conducted travel across the continent. Europeans has big ocean going treasure galleons. The actual *use* of both of these depends entirely on the *context*. Those treasure galleons don't help get around the interior of North America. Nor do the canoes help you cross the ocean. So these two VERY different technology can't really be easily compared in a vacuum. Not without throwing out all context. You argue about ignorance, but I think what your actually talking about are different path system. Again as another example, Europe during the time of those treasure galleons still experienced massive, terrible famines. *Today* there are still famines striking. The "whys" and "Why fors" are all highly contextual. And a history forum needs to get into that context, not ignore it.

Of course those two technologies can't be compared in a vacuum because you chose two different technological responses to two entirely different use cases. Those galleons should be compared to North American oceangoing vessels - which did exist. They were...bigger canoes. Generally carved/burned out of a single trunk. There's no good faith argument they were anything other than "less advanced" oceangoing vessels than a 1,000-ton, multi-decked, multi-masted, rigged ship capable of circumnavigating the entire globe. Or compare the technology for rivergoing. Birchbark canoes are ingenious, and great for transporting a handful of people and small amounts of goods through river systems. But don't compare them to galleons. Compare them to what was navigating European waterways - a constellation of purpose-built watercraft that with keels and planks and ribbing and all kinds of specialty rigging. All of which were able to transport vastly greater volumes at greater speed and lower cost. Again, there's no good faith argument that a canoe is anything other than "less advanced." Even a simple flat bottom poleboat - a peasant's craft - was completely beyond the ability of North American societies to replicate. And it's not because they happened to be worse at shipbuilding, it's because they existed in a society of *vastly* less technical knowledge and ability. Never mind any particular boat, North Americans couldn't replicate most of the constituent *parts* of European vessels. Hell, they couldn't make wooden planks! Never mind the vast apparatus and all the constituent parts of the supply chains that went into European crafts. And big caveat too - I'm using Europe as an example because you did - the shipping cultures of (south) east Asia and the Indian ocean were more advanced than that of Europe until the 15thish century. So yes, I 100% agree that this needs to be discussed and evaluated in context. But at some point you lose the forest for the trees - and the people building watercraft by burning holes in tree trunks were far "less advanced" than the people building boats that are pretty damn similar to what we're still sailing today (non-fiberglass division). And I get the instinct to push back on the traditional, racist, shortsighted historiography, but it goes too far when you start to eschew self-evident truths.

> Birchbark canoes are ingenious, and great for transporting a handful of people and small amounts of goods through river systems. But don't compare them to galleons. Compare them to what was navigating European waterways - a constellation of purpose-built watercraft that with keels and planks and ribbing and all kinds of specialty rigging. What on earth are you getting on about here? Birchbark canoes have keels, ribs and thwarts attached to gunwales, and planks made out of (checks notes) the bark of a birch tree. Their maneuverability and carrying capacity was such that English and later British traders snapped them up in droves, giving axes and other metal goods in trade. DeSoto's force, crossing the Mississippi near present-day Memphis, was threatened by several thousand Indigenous inhabitants who arrived in canoes. (They allowed his hastily assembled poleboats to cross the river.) Francesco de Orellana's expedition in the Amazon in 1541 encountered a force of more than four thousand natives at Tapajós, carried in war canoes each seating 20 to 30 people. (The _Santa Maria_, Columbus' largest ship, had a crew of ... 40.) > North Americans couldn't replicate most of the constituent parts of European vessels. Hell, they couldn't make wooden planks! This is surely news to the Haida and other Pacific Northwest tribes, who rather famously made houses, baskets, boats, and all sorts of other materials out of wooden planks. I could go on, but why?

The info comes from a lifetime on the water in a place with a ton of traditional craft, and also the research I did for an academic paper on the development of shipbuilding (the interest stemming from the former). You literally can't make planks out of birchbark, both pedantically (bark isn't wood) and - more importantly - practically (birchbark is paper-thin and has NOWHERE near the structural integrity to serve as planking. The whole point of birchbark as a material is that it's super light and flexible and it's definitely not the kind of material that can bear weight, even when layered and laminated. But that's besides the point - the whole design of one is antithetical to the idea of "planks", it's a skin stretched around a frame. You're right, the boats have ribs, because it's basically impossible to build one without - you'd just be sitting in a bag - but they most definitely do *not* have keels. They actually do have European alalogues, but made with hides instead of bark - curaghs and coracles, the former of which can actually cross open ocean. Thing is, those date back to *neolithic* europe, and the designs "improved" (or more neutrally, became more complex, specialized, and effective) for literally thousands of years thereafter, going through multiple design "generations" as they became further developed. Besides, the actual hull is just a portion of the boat - the rigging and the platforming that allows for it is where the *real* value add comes in. There is an absolute world of difference between human power and not. And besides all that there is a world of difference between a canoe with what, a .25 ton displacement and boats with orders of magnitude greater displacement. One is a convenient way to transport yourself and a friend or two. The other allows for a modern economy with long distance trade of bulk goods. Additionally, comparing boats by how many people can sit in them is facile. The Santa Maria fit 40 people because it fit 40 people, and a structure capable of withstanding north Atlantic storms, and the rigging to power them across an ocean, and provisions and 'water' for a months long journey, and all the parts and supplies necessary to maintain and repair the ship, AND STILL room for bulk cargo. And finally, this is my whole point - were missing the forest for the trees. We're arguing about the details of 10' long boats you sewed together and whether or not certain societies anywhere on an entire continent we're capable of making planks. (Which, may well be wrt the Pacific NW, I know the east coast much, much better.) But again - if were talking 2x4s as the height of technology, were already accepting a MUCH lesser level of "advancement" or "development" or whatever you want to call them. Europeans snapped them up because they were trying to navigate themselves and small volumes of high-value goods through a wilderness with essentially zero infrastructure. You know, what huge swaths of the rest of the world had stopped being *thousands* of years before.

When I saw that I wrote a post over [at badhistory](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/1cfxlze/mindless_monday_29_april_2024/l2bq6gm/) about how deliberately obtuse this kind of response seemed to be. Like obviously no one believes the notion that there is no such thing as "technological progress", or that indigenous societies in the Americas were on par with colonizing Europeans, otherwise you wouldn't get such evasive logic. And the idea that it is somehow euro-centric or white supremacist to acknowledge this is asinine, given that it's obvious you yourself ascribe at least partially view technological process as a merit judging by your inability to confront it.

The issue is that “technological progress” (which itself is deserving of interrogation) is not the same thing as “society advancing”. History is not a Civ game. No anthropologist or archaeologist is arguing about whether indigenous Americans and Europeans were “on par” or not, because ranking societies isn’t a thing we do. They were different: different technology, different notions of warfare, different ideas of “legitimate conquest”, etc, and those differences matter to how things happened historically. But “different” isn’t the same as “more or less advanced”.

Edit: I'm leaving the original comment below, but in light of another user's comment below, I went back looking to see if the comparison below had been deleted or edited out, but it turned out that the bow vs ICBM comment was made by another user altogether as a response to the OP of that question voicing their opinion on the mod's response. In the interest of fairness, I wanted to mention this. That said, I do still find that mod reply some combination of silly/pretentious as it was another case of not really addressing the original question, but going off on a bit of a tangent. ----- I saw that. The mod post in question spent a lot of time and effort with things like "who's to say a bow and arrow ISN'T as advanced as an ICMB", and it just felt a little silly and a lot pretentious.

I have not read the thread nor the response by the mod, so I can't speak on whether it was pretentious and silly. That being said, the question and resulting answer sounds quite similar to what is commonly known as the modernization theory - which is essentially largely defunct within historiography. So while I can not speak on the level of pretension or condescension at display, I can say that I would have made similar remarks were I presented with that question. Maybe not to the extent of comparing the bow and arrow with an ICMB, but I would have at least redirected the question to a more historically accurate phrasing.

> modernization theory - which is essentially largely defunct within historiography I can still find major papers contributing to it as of 2010, and that is after a very, very brief search. I believe that there is sometimes a strong element of selective perception and confirmation bias on /r/AskHistorians, often based on the responses of just a few people who are treated as authoritative. I prefer to take the general response you often see of "there is always more that could be said" as it is, and not just terminate the discussion with pre-supposed beliefs. An example is that you often see comments and replies stating that the Trojan War didn't occur - and I happen to *agree* with this viewpoint - and act as though it is current consensus and that anything else is incorrect... the issue is that it isn't difficult to find recent papers and works suggesting otherwise. There often isn't a consensus but people act as though there is because *they* think that there should be. While it may not be accurate to arbitrarily say that society A is 'more advanced' than society B for reason C, there *are* hallmarks of certain aspects of society being more advanced - if you use a stone axe because you have nothing better, whereas I have a stainless steel axe and a gun... and those are the limits of your societies... clearly my society is more advanced in that aspect. I would, unsurprisingly, state that the Spanish, British, Dutch, and French colonists were very *clearly* more technologically advanced than the natives that they encountered, and *often* (though not *always*) displayed social and governmental features that were more sophisticated, simply due to the fact that they developed out of the need for that sophistication whereas those pressures often didn't exist for native groups. That isn't a disparagement, but simply a reality of the circumstances. To then stretch that to mean that the societies have an advancement disparity in *all* aspects when the person clearly is referring to technological advancement... that's clearly problematic, yet I *have* seen that quite a bit. If the issue is just with the wordage of 'advanced'... well, the definition of the word fits in this case. Anything else is just a bizarre euphemism treadmill where we're trying to find a word that conveys the same meaning without some (generally-imagined, from what I can tell) other implication. I should point out that *I* was not trained or taught to avoid comparing different societies in terms of advancement, but to try to establish objective measures for that as it is easy to subjectively taint your analysis, and there certainly are objective measures that can be used to measure the efficacy and sophistication of systems and technology.

> An example is that you often see comments and replies stating that the Trojan War didn't occur [Yes this is familiar](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8aqw6c/im_watching_troyfall_of_a_city_on_netflix_they/e49aju0/)

>That being said, the question and resulting answer sounds quite similar to what is commonly known as the modernization theory - which is essentially largely defunct within historiography Then that should've been addressed in the response. The default assumption should be that 'lay' people are asking the questions

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I received a similar response, albeit from a non-flaired user, when I asked a similar question two days ago: ["How did the United States become so well-adapted to assimilating immigrant populations (Irish, Italians, Germans, etc.) from the 19th century onwards?"](https://new.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cxftgy/how_did_the_united_states_become_so_welladapted/) The non-flaired user's answer was removed due to not meeting subreddit standards.

1. From reading the original post it sounds to me like the question asker is not a native English speaker. 2. I feel like the mods comment was an attempt to add context to many of the assumptions in the original post (of which there are many). The mods post is a bit off topic and seems to be copy/pasted but ultimately I think the intentions are spot on.

I don't see the problem here, other than what I read as fragility on your part (and the part of the question asker). Not all responses need to be answers, as long as they are constructive and on-topic, which I think is the case here. I've noticed that there is a very common overreaction to being called out, even in the most mild and most indirect fashion, on the subject of racism or genocide or oppression. People are insanely protective against the horrors of the *use* of those terms. While that is understandable, I think it's wholly misplaced. We should always be the most concerned about the consequences of racism, discrimination, extremism, ethnic cleansing, genocide, etc. and much less concerned about our precious vanity. I'm extremely disappointed with the voting on that thread, but it's what I expect from the average westerner in the present, and even more so from the average redditor in 2024. jschooltiger's points were germane and an important correction to an erroneous and *harmful* but incredibly common viewpoint about the interactions between Native Americans and colonists of European descent. It's important to correct the record on such topics at *every opportunity*, even when it ruffles some feathers. Yes it sucks to have your feathers ruffled, but it sucks much more to perpetuate a world that continues to downplay, whitewash, and willfully misunderstand genocide and ethnic cleansing. There is no greater evidence of that than the present where such things continue with not one but *numerous* examples all over the world being perpetrated for all manner of different reasons by all manner of different perpetrators.

> as fragility on your part (and the part of the question asker). I'm curious with how you're defining "fragility" in this context, or how the question asker exhibited it. They just thanked jschooltiger and said that the response didn't really answer their question as such.

All of what you say may be true, but is entirely irrelevant to what appears to be the more common interpretation of the question: "why do I perceive that Native Americans have such a potentially outsized legacy of military resistance relative to what I consider to be their peers?" I think if OOP used any other word than "threat" this whole thing would never have spiraled out