How should members most helpfully share videos?

[Gwin Ru]

...

... what bugs me the most are those obsessive-compulsive videos floods on trending threads and which videos do not even belong, or worse, are irrelevant, to the subject of the threads... threads get diluted and confusing to readers looking for answers to whatever questions or interest they may have.

... quality over quantity... you know... that "Signal-to-Noise" ratio.

[I am B]

It is nice that mods are concerned about this. I haven't been here for much but the signal-to-noise has indeed declined since i joined imho... Mostly because of videos, posted mostly by the same users.

I feel like something relevant too around the same lines is the embedding of Twits.

I post them as anyone else, but some threads have really been turned into a copy specific user's Twitter feeds, since they post preety much everything they get. (And the WW3 Ukraine post is proof of it)

The algorythm gets too deep in the minds of some Avalon users. Posting some is fine, but its important to give a explaination over it, maybe an opinion, and at least posting it all on the same post, instead of doing a different one for every twit they come across (sometimes following their own, or cutting other user's conversations).

I feel like, despite the lightning speed of the world and news right now, the specific threads should be tackled with thought out posts that put something on the table, not just "someone-said-that" or "look-at-thosecrazynews".

[Ernie Nemeth]

Often, I want to thank a post for a comment or other reason but won't because a video has been embedded and I have no time to watch it. I feel like I cannot thank a post unless I watch the video.

And there are far too many videos to watch them all, anyway. There aren't enough hours in a day for that.

I sometimes wonder why a video gets posted in the first place, when a sentence or two, in their own words, would have been sufficient and far more efficient. After all, this is a bulletin board site, where discussions are had in the form of the written word. That is its appeal, for me at least.

Another point is that videos are often deleted and exist no more so the link is useless. As a result, a post can suffer without that relevant video. This makes many threads difficult to read and to understand.

More importantly, I will not click on a link if nothing but a link is offered. A short summary has to outline the contents of the video in order for me to take the bait. There have been times that such blind links have taken me to material I don't want to be exposed to.

The amount of information has become a torrent in our lives, and paring down that info and consuming only the salient bits has become a form of art. Like an artist, staying true to one's art is often fraught with conflicts, contradictions and confusion - not to mention a certain degree of obsessive compulsion.

It is all too easy to develop a conceptual bias due to information overload and the efforts and means used to deal with that factual avalanche. That can easily lead to a myopic point of view and a slanted sharing of facts and videos to support what is essentially a dogmatic reiteration of a central concept.


Personally, I'm finding that less is often more. If the world is filled with clamoring voices, each with a unique point of view, then what is not said can be far more informative than all the things that are...

[araucaria]

There is another aspect to this issue, and that is the devices people use. For various reasons, I still work from a desktop, and I do understand that lengthy text posts may cause problems at the other end. Is that a sufficient reason to interrupt my thought processes and discover 140-character mode ? Definitely not ! There are some things that cannot be stated in less than say 150 characters, eg the attendees at an event. Or, the kama sutra (example off the top of my head) would not be complete. Coitus interruptus : how do I finish position 1 ? The medium is not the message, the message is a long battle every inch of the way. Suppose the answer to the universe and everything were not 42 but… 142 : on some level, the message would never get through. On another level, just post a video, problem solved.

[Delight]

What I am looking for is the RECENT information so I would like to know when the video was created. I listen to long conversations while doing other things. It is "fiddly" to me to write out a lot on the videos I share...sorry. If others share a video without explanation, I may check it out but I would like the title and whatever blurb goes along with the video.

[Mashika]

Specially the issue with videos is that, at least if hosted on youtube, they can go away at any moment, so, maybe some guidelines should be suggested or even enforced sometimes

1. Post the title, and possibly the description of the video, so that if it goes missing, it can be found somewhere else
2. Describe what the video is about in your own words, and/or why it matters in the current conversation context
3. If possible, provide an alternative link to something other than youtube
4. As a nice thing to do, but may not be possible at all. If a video got posted and it gets removed a day or hours later or so (short time since the post was made) and then a new version shows up or is reuploaded on another host, and you know this happened, please edit your post and add the new link

There's nothing worse than looking at a post and seeing a video link, clicking on it and then getting an error saying the video doesn't exist and not knowing what it was about or anything at all.

And this i think applies to images as well, i got burned very badly by it some time ago, when i got involved too much into the issue with anna-news getting banned from youtube and all their videos disappearing in less than one hour, then my entire account was gone too, including all images and videos. All posts made everywhere and which had embedded images or videos from my channel were suddenly broken and there were too many and no way to get the content back (i never made a backup)

This happens to a lot of people so i think in these times it would be best to at least track a second host if it exists. Most serious youtubers also host their videos on rumble or other platform and they post the links of the other hosts on the youtube video description, so it's easy to just copy the link and add it as a second source on the Avalon post

[RunningDeer]

I recently came to the realization that it’s not a good use of my time to transcribe portions of say a 20 minutes video that takes me 40-60 minutes to prepare. I plan to share vids, but I can’t promise to summarize in my own words in a three to seven sentence paragraph or add personal commentary. I do that in other posts. Besides, what I get out of a video may be different from what’s important to others.

I’ve had my fill of what’s out there. Most of it is a repeat of things from other cycles when I first came aboard Avalon. I get that it’s important to see what’s current. I’m at the point where now that I’ve prepared as best as I can, there’s nothing more I can do.

Life, as they say, is an inside job. I’ll be there for others in the tomorrows to come. How? I suspect, it'll happen like it always does. At the right time and in the best way for the individual, and that includes for me.






♡

[Mashika]

Posted by Casey Claar (here)
I am someone who takes in large collections of concepts well. When I come here I take in the basic concepts present in thread titles ( collectively ) and feel for where I might enter. I am aware now of where people are talking and where people are largely presenting video data. Roughly 80% of my attention is given to where people are dialoguing in depth. I appreciate video, but more-so when it is the direct work of someone present here on the board. This is because I am not just looking for more data to process, I am looking to connect with the sources of these data. It was Bill's work, for example, which brought me to this board, and it will be the direct work of those here which keep me here. It is the group I am principally interested in, not the data, the data is secondary. One more point: new active threads are good and fine and all, but there do not need to be copious amounts of them. This board is huge. I could never make my way wholly through it even if new threads stopped altogether right this second. Quality, every time over quantity. I appreciate when people occasionally bump old threads of such quality.

So--

Video to text : for me the ratio best rests at 80% text to 20% video.

In most cases the text should certainly be the focus.

Whole, well thought out paragraphs.

If it is less, most gets lost as noise.


Casey

I too, are more about reading and getting deep into it, than listening or watching a video with lots of distractions.

Usually end up 'floating' away to another universe and then realize that 30 minutes passed by and i don't even know what the person was talking about all that time, i was 'away' But if i find something to read that is interesting, i focus entirely on that and don't lose focus at all, because there's nothing else going on, it's the only thing in front of me, i get immersed completely on the ideas and words, and i can start visualizing whatever the person wrote about. On the videos case, i need the video to be very interesting or something i truly wanted to watch before i even clicked on play, if not, then my mind just wanders away to whatever.

Also some of the tricks used by youtubers made me desperate, like repeating some aspects of something already told before, but with a very slightly different angle, or as a "reminder", all with the intention of using up time and making the video longer so it can be monetized better. That kind of stuff is annoying and doesn't really help. This doesn't happen with text posts

[Mashika]

Maybe posting a video should be a multi-step process:

1. Click on the video button

2. A popup shows up "Enter the title, description and link of your video". << Next | Cancel >>
2.1 Click "Next" button

3. "Are you sure you want to post this video? << Yes | No >>
3.1 Click "Yes" button

4. "Did you write a good, clear and good quality description? << Yes | No >>
4.1 Click "Yes" button

5. "Are you lying about the description?" << Yes | No >>
5.1 Click "Yes" button

[Tintin]

Posted by Mashika (here)
Maybe posting a video should be a multi-step process:

1. Click on the video button

2. A popup shows up "Enter the title, description and link of your video". << Next | Cancel >>
2.1 Click "Next" button

3. "Are you sure you want to post this video? << Yes | No >>
3.1 Click "Yes" button

4. "Did you write a good, clear and good quality description? << Yes | No >>
4.1 Click "Yes" button

5. "Are you lying about the description?" << Yes | No >>
5.1 Click "Yes" button

Number 5, definitely my favourite

"Are you lying about the description?" << Yes | No >>
5.1 Click "No" button
5.2 Go back to 2

That's definitely a coding job, but may have potential

[Bill Ryan]