The avowed challenges of editing the JHET during the years 2013-2018 included maintaining the journal’s broad historiographical embrace and protesting the ubiquitous references to 2-year impact factors as a measure of its scholarly relevance. The greater challenge, which the editor took up by habitude more than deliberation, was bringing authors representing a variety of contents, methods, and historical and social values into meaningful conversation with each other. It amounted to editorial policy as a scholarly conversation aid. It should be applied more deliberately.