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I created a reader for the AskHistorians reddit archives (ask-historians-archive.netlify.app)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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After the whole reddit API fiasco, I wanted a way to browse the AskHistorians subreddit on my phone without using the reddit app or website. It also bugged me to have all this valuable information on a site that might make it disappear on a whim.

So, I present to you the AskHistorians Archive. It allows you to browse past submissions to the subreddit, it's ad-free, works on mobile, loads fast, and works without JS.

For now, it only contains some of the most recent posts up until 2022-12-31, but I'm planning to upload more over time.

I hope this is useful to some - happy to hear and implement any feedback!

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[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I feel like a lot of other reference subs could use this treatment, too.

Technical subs, particularly, would be a great target for something like this. /r/homelab is, in my experience, one of the most reliable sources for solid information when playing around with and setting up home infra, and I’d love an alternative that didn’t push Reddit’s engagement numbers up.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Yes - The tool already works for any subreddit, but there's some polishing to be done to make it work well (e.g. showing nested comments). I'm also still looking for a good way to host more posts as it's quite a lot.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Oh for sure. But still, this is a great first pass at the effort, and I applaud it :)

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Thanks for this! Ask Historians was the one thing that made me really hesitate to completely cut ties with Reddit.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

OP’s archive tool is a great start

Wish there was a way to just import tons of posts from Reddit to here as well. Or maybe just a community dedicated to archives with a list of links to a bunch of things like what Op made?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

There's a tool for that but you need some technical expertise and your own lemmy instance

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It looks great, but I think it should give the names of the commenters on each comment for credit and transparency.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Good point. I will add that. I was hesitant to link back to Reddit but maybe that’s fine.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I’ve added the usernames now :) also added a way to collapse comments

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks for making this. I've been reading it a ton during my "break" from reddit.

One thing I noticed is that multi-part replies aren't captured by the archive. Here's an example with part 2 of a comment missing: https://ask-historians-archive.netlify.app/posts/zpjnpi.html

Anything that can be done about that, such as detecting comment chains where a person replies to their own comment?

Other than that, this is really a superior way to browse askhistorians. There are no moderator comments to skip over, and no threads with 30+ replies that are just a sea of [deleted].

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Glad you’re enjoying it, and thanks for the feedback!

I plan on just showing all comments, I think in other cases there might be interesting follow up questions as well.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Also, looking for communities to crosspost this. Any suggestions welcome :)

this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023

140 points (99.3% liked)

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