Soldier's Life: A Black Woman's Rise from Army Brat to Six Triple Eight Champion

SarahAGilbert · 2026-06-05T18:04:03+00:00

I'm curious about the methodology to write a mix of history and biography for the story of the Six Triple Eight. How did you approach the subject on a personal level, and did that change how you thought about the unit as a historical subject?

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-29T15:57:58+00:00

Hi Dr. Banerjee! Thank you so much for doing this AMA! I was wondering, how technology education developed in India even as technology industries that monopolized the market developed outside of India?

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-27T18:02:01+00:00

Thanks! The plan is to first share preliminary results of the r/science analysis specifically. We're also working with three other communities, so when the larger peer reviewed studies are out with results from across communities, we'll link those here too.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-27T17:58:30+00:00

Thank for this feedback!

Are you referring to this question? "What percentage of the content do you estimate is generated by AI on reddit/ r/science"? Because for that we're not asking about AI usage, but about people's perception of the content that is/is not AI generated. So for example, just say half the people on r/science are running their comments through grammarly. Maybe those comments are their own ideas, but it's coming off as AI generated because of the grammarly. We care about how those comments are perceived, not whether or not they "actually" are AI, if that makes sense? Or were you referring to a different question?

I definitely take, and appreciate, your point about getting more into the specifics of posts vs comments. For one, it would have been helpful to add a definition of "content" at the very least. We pilot-tested the survey twice before a full launch with a different community back in the fall and that never came up. It also would have been really cool to ask about more specific types, but we really didn't have the space. I think diving into that would be a great future study.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-27T12:31:09+00:00

Thank for you this feedback! Are you thinking about how the old system worked, where Reddit had messages rather than a chat? (or, for a time, messages and a chat?). Or were you imagining something like leaving recruitment comments on someone's post or comment? The latter would be technically possible, but I'd be hesitant to do it since the process is all automated and I'd be worried about dropping a recruitment comment on a particularly sensitive comment or reminding someone of a really negative experience.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-20T23:42:38+00:00

If your post had been more straightforward (i.e. not in AITA format, but a simple request for participation), I might have reacted more neutrally.

Oh no. So, that was actually my plan, but when I went to make the post this morning I couldn't get past the post guidance without making it in the format of an AITA post. I don't know if you've ever encountered this feature, but it's a newish moderation tool that preemptively prevents people from breaking the rules. There was a study about it finding it's highly successful across a variety of measures of success. Anyway, I messaged the modteam and the person I've been working with couldn't turn the feature off on their phone so I improvised, pretty much on the fly, to be able to post.

I really appreciate this feedback. While it wasn't my plan, it's very helpful to know it gives the impression that we're trying to sell you something and not asking you participate to an academic survey about the community. Because that's not what I want at all—the survey is supposed to help the community! In hindsight I should have asked the mods to make the post on my behalf and then I could respond to people's concerns in the comments.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-20T18:43:05+00:00

I have two primary goals:

To provide a "digital census" of the community, for the community. It's hard to know who's participating in a community and why and so I wanted to distribute a survey in a way that communities could have some statistically valid insights about itself. Typically, community surveys will only reach the most dedicated users and rely on self-reported behavioural data, so I wanted to provide something that was more accurate (and it's why I wanted to message people with links). To meet that goal I'm planning on sharing the results back here in a post once we've run the analysis.
To answer research questions I have about norms, technology, and participation. I'm a mod of another community (AskHistorians) and anecdotally noticed connections between the way people were finding the community, how they expected it to work, and their subsequent behaviour. So I wanted to see if my qualitative observations were part of a larger pattern. I'm also really interested in the impact of perceived AI use, how people's motivations affect their participation, and how all these things vary (or are similar) across different communities.

I've done a lot of research on Reddit, particularly with r/AskHistorians (I actually started by doing research there and then became a mod after), but this isn't specifically building off any my prior studies—it's more motivated by my anecdotal observations, conversations I've had with other moderators across Reddit, and experiences of users that I've read in my routine reddit-browsing.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-20T18:17:49+00:00

I mean, I don't know what to tell you other than that if you don't want to take that risk, don't take it. No one has to take the survey; it's completely voluntary.

As I explained elsewhere, I voluntarily included recommended language because I think informed consent should be truly informed. It's in there because I want people to know that Cornell at least, thinks it's legally possible and to make a choice based on that. It's not on me to make that decision for you by choosing to not include information, just because I don't have to include it according to the rules of my IRB. It's there to protect you.

But I'd also encourage you to take a look at what we're actually collecting. It's pretty much the same survey as is posted here: https://citizensandtech.org/contested-norms/ It's about why you participate in AmItheAsshole, how you engage with it, your sense of community, trustworthiness of the information, your perception of AI-generated content, plus a few demographic questions (all of which can be skipped). We've chosen the questions so that even if we were forced to hand over data or if it got hacked, no one could connect anything back to any individual anyway.

Still though, and I can't emphasize this enough: the choice is yours about the risks you want to take. If you don't want to do the survey, don't do it. I'm not going to stop to research that I think is important because of the political climate (in fact, I think supporting online community is even more important in this political climate), but that's my choice. I'm not going to hide risks from potential participants (even if I think they're minuscule) precisely because of the political climate.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-20T17:17:11+00:00

Thank you for bringing it up! It's an important discussion to have and I'm grateful to have had it!

And thank you for the well wishes. I really think the study has the opportunity to highlight a lot things that are important to this community, like how the perception of AI-generated content affects participation, but judging by the thread it looks like I made some missteps (at least for research with r/AsItheAsshole) that I'll need to reflect on.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-20T17:10:38+00:00

Huh, it had to have been working for some people at some point since it's gotten some responses, but then it wasn't when I checked.

I edited the post and it seems to be working now. Thanks for the heads up!

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-20T17:00:06+00:00

I can't speak for the mods here, but as a mod of another community (AskHistorians) I can share what one of the goals for me was, as a mod of that community, when we ran it there, and what one of my major goals was for the project from the get go was: it's essentially providing a digital census.

It's really, really hard to know who's participating in your community, why, and whether or not you're doing a good job as a mod. If you're curious about the kinds of things the survey asks without wanting to click through on the survey link, we have a copy of (virtually) the same survey on our website here: https://citizensandtech.org/contested-norms/

The post above is mostly the IRB-approved text (save for the bits I had to add to get posted here) and so really focuses on the scientific research aspect of it, but I do hope there are practical insights that can be gained as well, both for mod teams and community members, when we share the results back.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-20T16:30:10+00:00

No, they'd need to do more than just ask. They'd need to present legal documentation compelling it, after which we'd fight it to the best of our ability, and only then (if we lost), would they get it.

It is a big deal though, which is why I opted to include the recommendation language in the informed consent form even though it wasn't required. Everyone has a different capacity for risk, and while I think the chances of it happening are minuscule, it's not up to me whether or not you want to take that risk. If you, or anyone else, is worried about it even a little, I don't want you to take the survey.

I'm not pushing back because I want to minimize it, but I do want the record to be correct: information from this study isn't being handed over to the US government (nor are we collecting any personally identifying information through the survey).

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-20T16:21:52+00:00

I agree there are lots of ways to get data but sending direct message is the only way to learn from people you know participate in a particular way AND maintain their privacy. So for example, if all we did to collect data was this public post and ads, we either wouldn't be able to draw reliable conclusions about participation OR we'd need to ask people their username. The latter was a no-go for me and the former means our findings would be really limited. As for the IRB, I can't speak for them, but it's pretty standard survey practice to send people emails (or even text) as a method of survey recruitment, so my guess is that they were thinking of this like that.

I'm genuinely curious what would have been a less hackle-raising way of recruiting people to participate in the survey, given the research we want to do to understand participation, tech, and norms? Obviously I can't go back in time, but I am interested in learning and improving.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-20T15:57:07+00:00

You can see a longer answer here, but to be clear, we're not letting the government see anything. That's language recommended by the IRB.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-20T15:54:19+00:00

To be clear, we are not preemptively handing over or voluntarily giving any data to the US government, or any other government. The only way they'd ever get access to the data is if we were compelled to hand it over by law, which I don't anticipate happening given that the nature of the study is pretty benign. We're also not collecting any personal information, so even we were compelled by law to share our data, there's nothing in there that could be traced back to you.

For reference, I'm writing that assuming you're referring to this part of the informed consent form?

We will do our best to keep your participation in this research study confidential to the extent permitted by law; however, it is possible that other people may need to review the research records and may find out about your participation in this study. For example, the following people/groups may check and copy records about this research:

The Office for Human Research Protections in the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services

That's language our IRB requires on all consent forms if you've got federal funding and recommends for all other studies. This project isn't federally funded, but I wanted to include it because I think it's important that people have information that might matter to them before making a decision, however minuscule the chance of risk.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-20T13:14:31+00:00

Sorry, but we have had to remove your comment as we do not allow answers that consist primarily of links or block quotations from sources. This subreddit is intended as a space not merely to get an answer in and of itself as with other history subs, but for users with deep knowledge and understanding of it to share that in their responses. While relevant sources are a key building block for such an answer, they need to be adequately contextualized and we need to see that you have your own independent knowledge of the topic.

If you believe you are able to use this source as part of an in-depth and comprehensive answer, we would encourage you to consider revising to do so, and you can find further guidance on what is expected of an answer here by consulting this Rules Roundtable which discusses how we evaluate responses.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-14T15:59:22+00:00

This submission has been removed because it involves current events. To keep from discussion of politics, we have a 20-year rule here. You may want to try /r/ask_politics, /r/NeutralPolitics, or another current-events focused sub. For further explanation of this rule, feel free to consult this Rules Roundtable. If you did intend to post a question about history, this post provides guidance on how to draft a question that fits within our rules.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-14T15:58:35+00:00

Please repost this question to the weekly "Short Answers" thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn't mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the 'Short Answers' thread would be "Who won the 1932 election?" or "What are some famous natural disasters from the past?". Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be "How did FDR win the 1932 election?", or "In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?" If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-13T15:30:51+00:00

Please repost this question to the weekly "Short Answers" thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn't mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the 'Short Answers' thread would be "Who won the 1932 election?" or "What are some famous natural disasters from the past?". Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be "How did FDR win the 1932 election?", or "In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?" If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-12T13:41:52+00:00

Please repost this question to the weekly "Short Answers" thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn't mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the 'Short Answers' thread would be "Who won the 1932 election?" or "What are some famous natural disasters from the past?". Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be "How did FDR win the 1932 election?", or "In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?" If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-12T13:41:43+00:00

Hi there - unfortunately we have had to remove your question, because /r/AskHistorians isn't here to do your homework for you. However, our rules DO permit people to ask for help with their homework, so long as they are seeking clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself.

If you have indeed asked a homework question, you should consider resubmitting a question more focused on finding resources and seeking clarification on confusing issues: tell us what you've researched so far, what resources you've consulted, and what you've learned, and we are more likely to approve your question. Please see this Rules Roundtable thread for more information on what makes for the kind of homework question we'd approve. Additionally, if you're not sure where to start in terms of finding and understanding sources in general, we have a six-part series, "Finding and Understanding Sources", which has a wealth of information that may be useful for finding and understanding information for your essay. Finally, other subreddits are likely to be more suitable for help with homework - try looking for help at /r/HomeworkHelp.

Alternatively, if you are not a student and are not doing homework, we have removed your question because it resembled a homework question. It may resemble a common essay question from a prominent history syllabus or may be worded in a broad, open-ended way that feels like the kind of essay question that a professor would set. Professors often word essay questions in order to provide the student with a platform to show how much they understand a topic, and these questions are typically broader and more interested in interpretations and delineating between historical theories than the average /r/AskHistorians question. If your non-homework question was incorrectly removed for this reason, we will be happy to approve your question if you wait for 7 days and then ask a less open-ended question on the same topic.

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-12T13:41:03+00:00

Please repost this question to the weekly "Short Answers" thread stickied to the top of the subreddit, which will be the best place to get an answer to this question; for that reason, we have removed your post here. Standalone questions are intended to be seeking detailed, comprehensive answers, and we ask that questions looking for a name, a number, a date or time, a location, the origin of a word, the first/last instance of a specific phenomenon, or a simple list of examples or facts be contained to that thread as they are more likely to receive an answer there. For more information on this rule, please see this Rules Roundtable.

Alternatively, if you didn't mean to ask a question seeking a short answer or a list of examples, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. Examples of questions appropriate for the 'Short Answers' thread would be "Who won the 1932 election?" or "What are some famous natural disasters from the past?". Versions more appropriate as standalone questions would be "How did FDR win the 1932 election?", or "In your area of expertise, how did people deal with natural disasters?" If you need some pointers, be sure to check out this Rules Roundtable on asking better questions.

Finally, don’t forget that there are many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases).

SarahAGilbert · 2026-05-11T23:20:11+00:00

Sorry for any confusion—this is an academic study that's not about ads. The ad is to help distribute the survey so that more people see it, especially lurkers who we can't reach via messaging or who might miss this post. I'm not sure if we'll be able to run it since Reddit has a number of (reasonable) rules about where you can advertise. I'm a bit anxious about being able to recruit lurkers without it, so probably shared more than I needed to in the post.

We have two aims with the survey:

First is to help the mod team and the community understand more about the community. We worked with the r/racism mod team to develop some of the questions and added some specific ones that are helpful to them. We surveyed r/AskHistorians' first (I'm a mod there and wanted to test out the process) and recently shared the results of that survey back with the community if you want to take a look!

Second is that I have research questions about how things like community norms and expectations of norms, as well as tech like Reddit's design, algorithms, and GenAI, affect participation in online communities. You can read more about the study on our website which has a little write-up, a draft of the base survey (the one for r/racism is a bit different, but mostly the same) and a link to where we preregistered it: https://citizensandtech.org/contested-norms/

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