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Youtube "how to" videos are mostly useless

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thm_w:

--- Quote from: tggzzz on March 18, 2024, 11:20:23 pm ---The amount of his remaining life wasted by people falsely leading him to believe they have the answer he is looking for.

Much less time would wasted with irrelevant printed material.

--- End quote ---

No one falsely mislead anyone. Search for "epson XP–620" on youtube, see no repair videos and move on. Every video in the top ten is clearly labeled as to being a review or unboxing video.

Of course youtube clickbait and scam videos exist, but this is not an example of that at all. All of the specific examples given in this thread so far are just people not understanding how and where to search for content.

wilfred:

--- Quote from: soldar on March 18, 2024, 09:46:56 am ---
Just give me a set of plans and don't waste my time.


--- End quote ---

The videos aren't made with just you in mind. You have to do the work finding the one someone made with you in mind. Of the rest of the videos you may find out what you don't want to do.

And yeah there are a lot of videos of people just making something which isn't always helpful of entertaining. It isn't new, just look at most cooking shows on TV, only a small portion of the audience will ever make the recipes. For the rest it is just entertainment and possibly collecting ideas.

I watch Cutting Edge Engineering every Friday even though I will never own a lathe or fix broken parts of heavy earthmoving equipment. But even with being a niche Australian channel he still has 750,000 subscribers and some videos attract millions of views. Even Adam Savage from Mythbusters is a fan.

rsjsouza:
This is a rant repeated to oblivion and the generalization carries zero merit. It is similar to say that Google is useless because it returns 110.000 hits on a subject and most of them are off-topic. You can get better at handling the search tool and its switches/syntax. Also, the more you use it, the more you develop a feel for the type and quality of content based on the title and the channel/website.

I have used the platform to create "how-to" videos for GUIs that carry much higher information value amd lead to a much faster resolution when compared to a wall of text. Explaining menu options, right-clicks and other events (which ironically are sometimes shown in an animated GIF no less) are less efficient in text. Concomittantly, I also created long form user's guides and quick tips in text form, only to notice how short span attention is prevalent these days. A large number of people complain there is no user's guide, then when pointed out to it, don't read and ask questions where answers are easily searchable in the documentation.

At last, as tzaboo mentioned, the financials are extremely favourable to publish content on Youtube, Odysee, etc.

IanB:

--- Quote from: soldar on March 18, 2024, 09:46:56 am ---I want a good intro an what you are going to build. What is the finished product. Then a good explanation on how to go about it. I do not want to see a video where the guy just starts out cutting lumber in a mysterious fashion.

Just give me a set of plans and don't waste my time.
--- End quote ---

I think there are some exceptions.

For example, with wood working, Matthias Wandel ("Woodgears") gives a good overview of his thought process, shows construction in detail, and includes mistakes to watch out for.

If you want plans, he has very detailed plans for many of his projects available from his website.

Another excellent resource for machining is Clickspring. Very detailed explanations of every step with 11/10 production quality. I have no idea how he does it.

I think YouTube is so big it takes time to sort the gold from the dross.

langwadt:

--- Quote from: IanB on March 19, 2024, 12:29:03 am ---
--- Quote from: soldar on March 18, 2024, 09:46:56 am ---I want a good intro an what you are going to build. What is the finished product. Then a good explanation on how to go about it. I do not want to see a video where the guy just starts out cutting lumber in a mysterious fashion.

Just give me a set of plans and don't waste my time.
--- End quote ---

I think there are some exceptions.

For example, with wood working, Matthias Wandel ("Woodgears") gives a good overview of his thought process, shows construction in detail, and includes mistakes to watch out for.

If you want plans, he has very detailed plans for many of his projects available from his website.

--- End quote ---

he's said before that most seem buy plans as way to support him and very few actually get to building the thing

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