43 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: AskHistorians and uncertainty surrounding the future of API access
Because of the audience.
I spent 15 years teaching at a big journalism school in the Midwest. This came up time and time again -- "why do we post our content on [platform]? instead of on our own site?"
And the answer always comes down to "because [x] million people use that site and [y] thousand people came to our site organically over the years..." which is unfortunate but is how the Internet works.
We have a (perhaps inadvertently created) great platform here to do public history; as its own site, perhaps we're shouting into the void more than we would like. One of the great things about this platform is that we shout into the void less often than we would otherwise do.
Comment by WannabeUltrarunner at 07/06/2023 at 10:41 UTC
16 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I would definitely be happy to switch to another site to continue having access to the content and to support the team behind it.
As it is, most of my interests areas find that serious quality discussion, sharing and exchanges thrive better in specific specialised forums or platforms.
It's as if the internet is going back to the days of php forums and VB boards of the late 90s and early 2000s (a development that may make a worthy AskHistorians question even heh).
And judging by Redditors' outpour of support for their favourite subs and for the protest, and judging by the wonderful response received on the earlier AskHistorians thank-you thread by the mods, I feel there's a good chance many of us will switch platforms or take on another just to continue having access to the wonderful content and people here.
If there's a way to export all the content from here and post it on another platform, that would be the cherry on top of the cake.
Comment by Grwwwvy at 07/06/2023 at 17:06 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
In my opinion, the size and quality of the audience/community of reddit is going downhill. If that trend continues for too long you'll be shouting into the void as much as if you were posting to myspace.
That's why I think now is the last chance to say "hey, askhistorians is moving/mirroring somewhere else now" because anyone who uses a third party app won't be hearing that message and following along to the new place if it doesnt happen soon.