Is AskHistorians on Reddit credible?

The short answer is yes, AskHistorians is a site with (mostly) credible information from (mainly) credible experts. Consider my process.

I looked up AskHistorians on Wikipedia. I found indications that the AskHistorians is a place where people can ask questions of historians and that it is “strictly moderated.” Googling AskHistorians takes me to another page that tells me more about the organization, which appears to be run by historians. Finally, following a link in the citations on the Wikipedia page, I find a blog post by a graduate student writing on the History News Network, which is produced by Columbia University and George Mason University, both credible institutions.

Several of you pointed out that even credible websites still require critical review, and AskHistorians is no exception. Some posts at AskHistorians are stronger than others and there are limits to what a group voting system and strong moderation can do in the face of dedicated trolls. Still, quick checks can help

So, why did most students concluded that AskHistorians was not credible?

1. Students believed that the ending to a website (such as .com, .net, .org, or .gov) influences a site’s credibility. That is not the case. For the price of a domain (around $6) you can purchase almost any site ending you want.

2. Students did not distinguish between the publishing platform reddit, which is a general message board, and the specific AskHistorian message board, which is run by historians.

3. Students did not use the SIFT tools, such as adding Wikipedia or a quick google search in the lessons. Instead, many students jumped into AskHistorians and judged the source based on its look, language usage, grammar, or prior knowledge.

You cannot judge the credibility of a source based on the source itself. That’s like asking a liar if they are lying. Instead, we need to look to other indicators outside the source, and SIFT provides us a guide for this. Humans can be fooled into believing in the credibility of information based on something as simple as the font used on a web page, so we need a system to quickly help us sort credible from not.

To be fair, a now famous experiment that was referenced in your Check, Please readings found that neither undergraduate students nor professors at Stanford were very good at determining credibility of web pages. Which is why, before we start investigating the past, we’re training our brains to SIFT.

r/AskHistorians Wikipedia page.

Google Search for AskHistorians

History News Network.