Shuold an Alternate History forum be split from the existing WH?

[Arwon]

I think a good Alt History article can be useful for understanding history, because a good article shows exactly the range of players and factors and how they interacted. Bad alt-history is just fantasy or wish-fulfullment.

I might humbly offer these three posts as a decent example of "what if" hypotheticals discussed in a historical manner.

 

[joycem10]

Well of course it would be ignored, that's the bloody point.

Not to sound British, but cant you 'bloody well' ignore them now?

Its not like they hide behind ambiguous titles. When you see "Alt History: Spain", "A Big What If", "Without Hitler, would the Germans have still lost WW2?", "What if Germany Japan and Italy Won WW2" or "What if-- Harold and Tostig" you know what you're getting when you click the link.

This forum doesnt have enough traffic that what you consider legit threads are getting pushed off the front page due to an overwhelming rush of alt history threads.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Just because you don't do it, Cheezy, does not mean that it's not done by serious, lauded historians in nonfiction books all the time.

If you don't like them, ignore them.

I assume you mean things like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Pacific_War

That would be what is called "Historical Fiction."

 

[North King]

I assume you mean things like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Pacific_War

That would be what is called "Historical Fiction."

No, I don't. I mean things like Timothy Tackett's When the King took Flight. He openly speculates on how things might have been different, and explains why it is useful to speculate on that to boot.

 

[RedRalph]

I put this thread up recently, but I actually dont think the forum should be split, rather one of the mods should officially say that both history and alt history are cool with this one. splitting forums just cuts down the amount of traffic on both and prevents people form seeing somehting which potentially interests them