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How much time do you think should pass before articles or discussion about any given event can be tagged as history?
Personally I think the minimum should be 10 or 15 years, with stuff from 5 to 10 years ago being recent history, but I'm kinda biased.
/r/AskHistorians has a 20 year rule. Would make sense to me to follow their lead since that sub does get input from actual practicing historians. They explain their rationale behind it here and I think most of the considerations hold for Tildes as well, though many of the most politically salient issues today seem to have root causes that reach back to the early to mid-90s. So some of the rationales about personal experience and avoiding acrimony probably wouldn't hold.
I once met an archeologist who said that in her field they consider anything older than 50 years fair game for archeologists. In fact, she had worked for the City of Los Angeles and would often get calls from people doing construction in the nearby dessert who dug up "artifacts" that were mostly beer cans and girly magazines from the 50s. But because they were older than 50 years, they had to check with her before continuing.
So 20 years for history and 50 years for archeology seems reasonable to me!
Part of that is also law, if I remember correctly. It's illegal to disrupt an archeological site, so you need to confirm that it doesn't hold any historical significance before effectively defacing it by, say, putting a house on it.
Oh absolutely. She indicated to me that she felt the short time frame was ridiculous. Apparently most of what they find in stuff that's ~50 years old is just trash. But I guess the line has to go somewhere!
Related askreddit thread:
How much time needs to pass before grave robbing turns into archeology? (obviously "grave robbing" is simplified.)
Wow! That thread is fascinating. Thank you! I had never heard about the cave-in at the Corvette museum. What a weird thing!