General > General Technical Chat
Are we becoming old, cranky scrooges in these forums.
eti:
--- Quote from: engrguy42 on May 26, 2020, 04:40:00 pm ---Youtube is free. Complaining about it is bordering on insane. Youtube creators spend a ton of time producing stuff, and the vast majority of tech youtubers get little or nothing in return. Except for complaints and 357 variations of "oh, you should have done it THIS way". And people expecting you to be their private tutor for free. And give them all the code you write.
Absolutely insane. A lot of selfish, entitled people out there.
Instead, you should be thanking every single freakin' one of them for what they do, and hitting the like button so often it breaks your freakin' mouse. And subscribe to EVERYONE. Because that's the only way they get a few measly pennies in return for their many hours of work.
And if you really think their stuff sucks and you can do it better, then do it. Show the world how freakin' brilliant you are and how much better you are. Start your own channel, and learn what it's really like.
--- End quote ---
YouTube is free TO US, but they get paid for doing it (as the incessant, cheesy, crass begging for likes and subscriptions, etc, demonstrates) - they are duly rewarded for their (sometimes) hard work. TV is free in the UK, apart from a meagre fee for a TV licence - but TV is generally tens of orders of magnitude more well researched, shot, edited and narrated - and they have the benefit of DECADES of experience, on-hand experts and VAST archives of past material to go on.
eti:
--- Quote from: Syntax Error on May 26, 2020, 04:59:20 pm ---Actually, thank everyone who contibutes to this vast digital universe of ours for free. The wiki editors, the open source coders, the web site builders and graphic designers, content providers, bloggers, vloggers and I guess, even the moderators.
Where were we 25 years ago? Not here.
Thanks Dave.
--- End quote ---
You're right - we we BETTER OFF that way, as too much "information", too much choice boggles and tires the mind. People had marginally, but measurably more patience, more respect and self-control, more manners and exponentially less narcissism than today. I'll take the 90s over this ANY DAY.
engrguy42:
To those who are convinced that the average youtube tech creator is "duly rewarded" for his hard work...
- The facts are that it typically takes about 1,000 views of a video for the creator to receive $1 US. Yes, that's right. Only $1 for 1,000 views.
- And if anyone is thinking about starting a tech youtube channel today, it would likely take you years of regularly posting videos before you could get to the point where you have enough subscribers to be able to get paid any money for your videos. I recall you need something like 1,000 or 2,000 subscribers.
- Your videos don't show up when people search for topics unless they are already popular, which means they've received a lot of "likes" and subscriptions. So you can't get popular unless you're popular. And you can't get money unless a lot of people watch your videos.
I could go on and on, but the facts are that the average tech youtuber gets very little, if any money, and has to put in years of work to get to that point. There are some exceptions of course, but those are people who have been very consistent and tenacious over the years, and have found the right niche. And they've also accepted the reality that their viewers are more interested in entertainment than in pure tech, and are willing to bend to those demands. Those are the people who realize that the average viewer will only watch the first 4 minutes of a video then click off to go watch a video of a cat playing piano.
For those who don't believe this, again I encourage you to start your own channel. You'll be amazed.
rsjsouza:
Saying there is no good learning materials in Youtube is a generalization that borders idiocy. Even if you dislike Dave or find it minimally deep, pick how many people someone like Louis Rossmann helped get into the business over the years, or how many useful tips and theoretical/practical things w2aew shows in his videos. Sure, it may not be the best and most efficient way to deliver specific content but, at the rate of 300h of video uploaded at every minute, there is no humanly possible way to evaluate everything. Throw into that the vast number of different languages and you reach places that never had anything close to that knowledge.
Sure, I prefer to learn via a structured way presented on a book or an online article, but with the diminishing returns of printed media (especially in languages other than English) the authors going to an "easier to create" media such as Youtube are still a very reasonable vehicle of content distribution.
SparkyFX:
--- Quote from: schmitt trigger on May 25, 2020, 02:58:47 pm ---Have you noticed that slowly but surely, un-civilized discourse across most, if not all internet forums has increased?
--- End quote ---
Yes and no. It is not as if humanity changed at all, a wider audience just got more exposure. I'd say from the many reasons, a few stick out:
- it is too hard to write lengthy posts on mobile devices, which has several effects on peoples' behavior (attention span when on the way, incomplete explanations and such)
- social network habits kicking in, as most people probably started interacting online via social networks, not usenet, mailing lists, forums
I'd also say the topic title ("Are we becoming old, cranky scrooges in these forums") focuses too much on who writes instead of what is written. This makes a huge difference in any topic - because it ignores the topic and gives rise to putting people in categories, which then becomes the topic. The latter is one of the biggest mistakes that can happen in a conversation, it is impossible to argue about pure existence or immutable properties without going extreme. Examples are plentiful in this thread.
--- Quote ---There are also specific instances in technical forums, made by newbies with preposterous questions: "Can anyone draw me a schematic for a 10,000w sinewave inverter? I have a 741 and a pair of 2N3055s that I would like to use." And when someone knowledgeable attempts to reason with them, they reply with a variation of "Are you going to help me out or not?"
--- End quote ---
The nice thing about these questions is: give them as much effort as put in the question, in such cases it wasn't much. Works with any member on a forum, no need to make a distinction of newbie/old fart/political orientation and such.
--- Quote from: floobydust on May 25, 2020, 11:15:01 pm ---TV and youtube are garbage for teaching you anything- it's like watching a video with someone explaining how to do a math exam.
--- End quote ---
Depends what kind of knowledge and from which end you approach the problem: from proving of having understood/applying/delivering a solution or from the process of learning. People are usually opposed to learn the same things a second time - maybe they need to refresh it once in a while. But that opposition is stronger than watching someone applying it.
There is knowledge which i could not learn from a textbook, i need to see how it's done and there are exceptionally good teachers on youtube showing their bag of tricks (or just plain basic knowledge) to anyone willing to watch it. Of course i think they should get more in return than some opinionated comment rant, but well - it is how it is.
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