OMG no way!!!
Brilliant! May not be that usefu,l but brilliant! |
Is that what it's for? I thought it was a way to cater for the blind who use the site..for some reason |
That is absolutely awesome.
<3 xkcd |
![[put at-character here]](image/at.gif) Bob: I'm not sure how many blind users use video sites, though of course they may enjoy the audio. Regardless, there's not much to miss in YouTube comments.
Philipp Lenssen: " On the other hand, YouTube restricts comments to 500 characters. But let’s see if too much parental care might scare some kids away from using the site. Or, as a real live comment by magneto518 on YouTube put it 51 seconds ago, 'wtf.. audio preview?' "
Your points don't flow for me, Philipp. The point of the cartoon seems to be that paying attention to comments would improve their quality, a no-brainer. But I'm not sure what "other hand" the 500-character limit stands in contrast to. And if by "parental care" you mean that YouTube audio comment preview would turn off users by seeming to be overbearing... I think any confusion is over the seemingly random feature choice. It needn't bother anyone who doesn't use it, though, so I doubt any hostile reaction could emerge.
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I don't think the new feature will improve YouTube's comments: people will click on "audio preview" and will think their comments are funny. YouTube needs to find a way to automatically filter the interesting comments. |
so, it needs a xkcd comic to force google to implement additional features? cool. .... and btw, listen to an empty comment, they even don't check for a null pointer, probably in java. |
> Your points don't flow for me, Philipp. The point of the cartoon
> seems to be that paying attention to comments would
> improve their quality, a no-brainer. But I'm not sure what
> "other hand" the 500-character limit stands in contrast to.
What I meant is that YouTube seems to strive for more high-quality comments, yet on the other hand they put in a restriction against long, thoughtful, well-researched, extensively backed up comments – because such a comment may need more than 500 characters. A comment length restriction pushes shorter, quicker type of commenting. (And even if the comment you wanted to make would have below 500 characters, such a dynamic comment "countdown" as implemented by YouTube could feel as a subconscious pressure to write shorter, or "start submitting already!".)
> And if by "parental care" you mean that YouTube audio
> comment preview would turn off users by seeming to
> be overbearing... I think any confusion is over the seemingly
> random feature choice. It needn't bother anyone who
> doesn't use it, though, so I doubt any hostile reaction could
> emerge.
I don't know what made YouTube big specifically. But a large part of their community, if judging from the comments (which is of course an incomplete and perhaps skewed picture of the community), are people who enjoy a bit of uncontrolled craziness. Compare with Google Video for instance, to which it looks much more cluttered. And I remember in video uploads, YouTube always approved videos much faster than Google Video – at YouTube, videos are instantly live. It's almost like the parents are out of town, if you know what I mean, and the party can start.
From this we can imagine three possible outcomes:
1. Nobody cares about this button, it will add some confusion but then things go on as usual. (Or as Ionut suspects, it will actually add some funniness hearing things be read back to you!)
- or – 2. Some of the hardcore users are annoyed they're being called "morons", if indirectly (per the Xkcd cartoon), and they dislike all the "parental" care, and they feel YouTube starts being uncool, and they move on to another video site. They enjoyed the anything goes craziness while it lasted, because it made them feel relaxed, unwatched, free to be as they wish. Parents who snub at the language of younger generations seems to be an age old problem. A comment like "lol wtf mcsame osama hahaha you=idiot" may seem just low-quality on the one hand, but it may also be a language helping a certain clique to identify themselves.
- or – 3. The quality of YouTube comments improves. Finally, all the hardcore users who'd love to have better comments get better comments. YouTube gets even more popular than before...
These are all just theories of course! I'd be interested what you think.
> Is that what it's for? I thought it was a way to cater for
> the blind who use the site..for some reason
Blind users may already have a text-to-speech engine built into their OS/ browser, so that anything can be read to them and so that they can navigate the web, so a specific speech engine would not be needed, I suppose (unless it's for something like captchas). |
How should "omg" be pronounced? Have a listen, it's really odd, sounding something like "wumg" to my ears. |
What I think YouTube needs is to revise access to comments, period. They need to look at allowing some features that you have in forums. I shouldn't have to work so hard to find my own comments and associated replies later on. Also there need to be better page links to comments, so I don't have to go one by one when there are 8 thousand comments. I shouldn't have to click on "View all 10,000 comments" which for many people is the beginning a really annoying loading session, and then do a "Find" typing in all kinds of crap to find comments.
Ridiculous.
There's a lot of info on the page of a video, with all the related videos and such. If they improve how people can access comments then the won't have to worry about how much the basic comment layout is failing. |
