Soc.history.what-if

The title of this article is incorrect because of technical limitations. The correct title is soc.history.what-if.

soc.history.what-if (or SHWI) is the name of a historical discussion group and community on the Usenet newsgroup system. The newsgroup focuses its discussion on the three closely related genres of history of virtual history, alternate history and uchronia. While these genre are not widely respected in academic history, the SHWI community regularly produces written works which meet or exceed the standard of virtual histories published by academic historians. The average quality of written work produced by contributors tends to meet the standards of published popular alternative history fiction.

Virtual history, and its less academic companions, are speculative fiction. In an academic context historians often ask, "If a factor varied, what would have resulted?" This is used for rhetorical or argumentative purposes, and also to assert what factors were significant in causing events to occur as they did. For instance, the question, "What if Napoleon had been successful at Waterloo?" could be answered "He would have been defeated by a European alliance of armies slightly later in 1815 at a different location in the Low Countries" would assert that the historian believed Waterloo was not significant in the downfall of Napoleon in 1815. The habit of beginning virtual histories with the question "What if...?" led directly to the name of the newsgroup.

A community

soc.history.what-if has been functioning for over ten years, and has a remarkably stable small population and a remarkably high signal to noise ratio when compared to other newsgroups. Based on these two factors a functioning community has grown in the newsgroup. Regular contributors to soc.history.what-if post from the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Italy, Russia, Japan, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Australia and New Zealand.

A large amount of community focus is dedicated to the history of the American Civil War (usually fascinated with Southern victory) and World War II. Due to the work of Alison Brooks in debunking the fascination of a possible success of "Operation Sealion" (the planned German invasion of England in 1940), SHWI is often cited as an argument against the plausibility of "Operation Sealion". Other topics demonstrate a similar fascination with speculative modern European and American military history or diplomatic history. Newer posters to SHWI often rely on historiographies based on the Great Man theory of history. More seasoned community members contribute speculations regarding the history of early modern, medieval, late antiquity, Africa or Asia. These more varied contributions are considered to be of great interest. Contributors are also esteemed for posts dealing with the minutiae of US history.

The community of SHWI highly values a concept called "plausibility", which is taken to mean that the events described would have happened following on from the reasonable single change initially depicted (called a "point of divergence" or "POD"). Contributions which are well written, about topics which are not commonly described, which are highly plausible are often well received and earn their author a great deal of respect.

Writing style in soc.history.what-if

Prior to May 2000, contributors limited their speculation to a single post which often argued a point and then debated with other posters in discussion. On 22 May 2000 Doug Muir posted the first part of an extended examination titled WI FDR killed in 1933?. This was rapidly followed by a second part.[1] Following Muir's lead, the standard is now long multi-part posts, adequately footnoted to indicate evidence for particular views. Authoring long multi-post footnoted contributions became a "status" symbol on SHWI.

In 2005, in a deliberate attempt to overcome a troll problem, many posters have been posting one line speculations. This is a partial return to the style commonly used before May 2000.

Another important element of shared writing style is the constant use of irony.

Irony as a community watchword

The primary aspect of community life involves the systemic use of irony to achieve effect. This irony is often multifaceted, as the core community members of soc.history.what-if are dedicated to providing academically rigorous histories of things which never occurred. This irony takes additional forms. Many U.S. posters use terse and cryptic references which are immediately picked up by other U.S. posters to refer to events in history or U.S. culture; this style is often parodied by Australian and Finnish contributors in their own contributions about Australian or Finnish history.

Poor writing is often critiqued for its lack of plausability. These attacks are usually phrased in terms of the need for "Alien Space Bats" or ASBs as the motive force behind the change. For example, "Well, Alien Space Bats could land the German army in Wales." The use of the term Alien Space Bats has been expanded to include handwaving difficulties in order to get to an interesting discussion.

An additional layer of irony is developed in the institution of the "double blind what-if" or DBWI. These contributions are usually a description of how real history is unbelievable, described by a narrator who comes from a time where things happened differently. An example: "As we all know, the First World War ended with the Second French Revolution in 1917, but what if the French army had managed to control the mutinies in the trenches?" Often double blind contributions are particularly subtle, and are usually marked as DBWI contributions to avoid causing offence or confusion.

Finally, the community has developed a conscientious ironic denial of certain things. For instance, speculation about the role of fascism in inter-war Britain resulted in the formulation of a term "unFascism" to describe a society which mimicked every aspect of continental European fascism, but staunchly denied any relationship between the speculated British system and European fascism. This ironic denial of the patently obvious extends to real world meetings of community members.

Social gatherings in the real world

Face to face meetings between members of soc.history.what-if are advertised by a contributor who insists that the proposed event will not occur at a specific time and place. This references the system of plausible deniability used regularly by states since the 1950s to hide occurrences from the public. These meetings are described as CABALs, a reference to a secretive government ministry, and community members take great pleasure in announcing that "There is No Cabal" or "TINC" when reporting on their meetings.

Social taboos

Social taboos include holocaust denial, arguing that "Operation Sealion" was possible, arguing contemporary politics and religious activism.

Trolls on SHWI

Beginning in 1998, a variety of trolls began to inhabit SHWI, most of them having highly unpopular political opinions. The greatest crisis that faced the community was in late 2001 and early 2002 when someone sent thousands of nonsense messages to the group nearly every day, making reading the group nearly impossible.

Esteemed contributions

Some of SHWI's most highly regarded contributions, or "timelines," are:

• (pseudonym) Chester A. Arthur. For all Time. A dystopia based on a speculation about US Vice President Henry Wallace becoming President in 1941.
• Ivan Hodes. Lest Anarchy Fall.
• Alison Brooks. Leg Theory and Flashman Option.
• (pseudonym) Kaiser Wilhelm III’s Decades of Darkness.
• Doug Muir. Buddha on Ice WI FDR killed in 1933? and the semi-collective Bronze Age New World.
• Anthony Mayer. Sugar and Spice
• Doug Hoff. How The West Was Weird and Empty America.
• Carlos Yu. East Meets West.
• (pseudonym) Gemellus. Quiet Flows the Don
• (pseudonym) Johnny Pez. Maximum Massachusetts. and The Drowned Baby Timeline.
• (pseudonym) Gnome What if Gordon Banks had Played? A dystopic Britain in the 1970's and 80's
• Mike Stone. Mr Hughes Goes to War
• Sydney Webb. Thaxted a timeline where Margaret Thatcher has a different political ideology.

SHWI has also produced a number of collective timelines like For All Nails. What If Civilization had Flourished in Temperate Zones? Confederate Liberals and Lefties and UnFascist Britain.