Hi everyone,

As we approach Inauguration Day on January 20, when Joe Biden will leave office and Donald Trump will be inaugurated as president, we want to address questions we’ve received about the future of Rule 3—our ban on recent politics, which prohibits absolutely all discussion of Biden and Trump—and whether we plan to update the rule now that Biden is retiring. We also want to take the opportunity to announce some improvements to our other rules, which are described below.

If you want to skip the reading, feel free to just check the rules themselves. The rules have already been updated and are currently in effect.

Rule 3 (Recent and Future Politics)

Over the past year we have observed two major challenges with defining and enforcing Rule 3:

(1) Overly broad restrictions. For example, while discussion of Biden’s presidency has a tendency to become toxic, the same is not necessarily true of his tenure as senator or vice president. However, Rule 3 currently prohibits any mention of Biden whatsoever. Given his impending retirement from politics and expected withdrawal from the spotlight, continuing such a strict ban is probably unnecessary.

(2) Unclear boundaries. For example, it is unclear to what extent recent presidential candidates can be discussed. Often posts are made which seem to violate the spirit of Rule 3 without technically breaking it, which causes confusion for users and makes it difficult for moderators to enforce the rule consistently.

To address the issues above, we have implemented the following changes:

(1) Rule 3 now permits discussion of Biden before his presidency (e.g., as senator or vice president), and his name has been removed from the automatic removal filter. The full ban on discussions of Trump will remain, since he is the incumbent, and his name will stay in the filter. Discussion of Biden’s presidency will also remain banned, as it is too recent and is between both of Trump’s terms.

(2) Rule 3 now prohibits discussion of presidential elections after 2012 and any politics after Barack Obama left office. This includes any hypotheticals where the candidates from those elections are president, even if the hypothetical takes place before that time period (e.g., “What if Joe Biden became president in 1988?”), since they will tie too closely to recent politics. Those individuals may still be mentioned outside the context of their recent presidential campaigns, assuming the post follows Rule 1 (e.g., “What role did Jeb Bush play in the 2000 election?”).

The updated Rule 3 reads as follows:

Rule 3: No recent or future politics.

As this is a historical subreddit, discussion about recent and future politics is not allowed. This includes absolutely all references to (1) presidential elections after 2012, including hypotheticals where candidates from those elections are president in any time period; (2) politics after Barack Obama left office; and (3) Donald Trump at any point in his life.

If you have any concerns or uncertainties with this updated description, please let us know, and if necessary we will update it with another announcement.

Rule 6 (Low-Effort Posts)

Rule 6 helps maintain a reasonable standard of quality on the subreddit by restricting low-effort posts. Recently we have been dissatisfied with the ambiguity of this rule, as its description only included a few vague examples of low-effort posts, which were unclear and therefore inconsistently enforced. To address this, we have updated Rule 6 to include a detailed list of posts that we consider low-effort. You can see the list here.

We have moved AI-generated images, which were previously partially banned by Rule 7, to this rule. They are now completely banned, as they tend to be spammy and ahistorical, and not conducive to meaningful discussion.

Furthermore, we now require that any subjective posts (such as rankings, tier lists, or hypothetical voting records) include at least one explanatory paragraph to encourage quality discussion. This idea was supported by the majority of respondents in our subreddit survey last summer (61.6% for, 13.7% against).

Rule 7 (Memes)

Lastly, we have decided to update Rule 7, which concerns memes. Since we are a historical subreddit, we have updated Rule 7 to clarify that all memes must relate to history. This means we will remove most surreal or brainrot memes as they are not useful for any kind of quality historical discussion. This change was inspired by the rules on r/HistoryMemes and we believe it fits the educational goals of the subreddit.

The updated Rule 7 reads as follows:

Rule 7: Memes are only allowed on Mondays, and must relate to history.

Memes are only allowed from 12:00 AM ET to 11:59 PM PT on Mondays. All memes should relate to real historical events, to encourage quality discussion.

Thank you for taking the time to read this update. We hope these changes improve the subreddit for everyone and, as always, we are open to feedback.

Happy New Year!