General > General Technical Chat

Youtube "how to" videos are mostly useless

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coppice:

--- Quote from: tggzzz on March 19, 2024, 03:10:28 pm ---That's exacerbated by the video medium: it takes me 15s to scan text before ignoring it, but 15 minutes with video. 60:1 is a killer.

--- End quote ---
That's not really an issue of the medium. Its mostly the choice of the author, looking to keep you viewing. Few videos make a clear statement up front about what's to come. while most lengthy text has a contents page up front.

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: coppice on March 19, 2024, 03:04:17 pm ---
--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on March 19, 2024, 02:50:47 pm ---I want to double down on one of my prior points.  A good textual document is more than enough for almost all of the topics mentioned in this thread.

--- End quote ---
For repair work the visual aspect of a video is its greatest strength. Most of what I want from those videos is to see how things fit together. For most things its complex. If learning from books was so great, why would people spend a fortune to learn from lectures in colleges? Really smart people learn quickly from book, while less able people gain massively from lectures. However, even the smartest people pick up new things faster with a combination of books and lectures.

--- End quote ---

Remember the old Haynes manuals showing how to repair your specific type of car?

Once upon a time they were full of clear drawings showing the essential points of the next step. Then photo reproduction became cheap and easy, so unclear visually confusing photos were used instead.

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: coppice on March 19, 2024, 03:13:40 pm ---
--- Quote from: tggzzz on March 19, 2024, 03:10:28 pm ---That's exacerbated by the video medium: it takes me 15s to scan text before ignoring it, but 15 minutes with video. 60:1 is a killer.

--- End quote ---
That's not really an issue of the medium. Its mostly the choice of the author, looking to keep you viewing. Few videos make a clear statement up front about what's to come. while most lengthy text has a contents page up front.

--- End quote ---

Most articles and videos contain a couple of thousand words. That's not lengthy when speed reading (30s) but is when watching (30mins).

Ranayna:

--- Quote from: IanB on March 19, 2024, 12:29:03 am ---I think YouTube is so big it takes time to sort the gold from the dross.

--- End quote ---
That is what this problem essentially boils down to, not only regarding Youtube, but in general.

You as an individual cannot know everything. There is just too much of everything out there. Everywhere.
If you know, you know. If you do not know, you either sometimes painstakingly search for it yourself, with a dubious chance of success.
Or you ask someone whose opinion you trust and ask them. And even then what they tell you might be not applicable for you.

This is already difficult enough for technical topics. Add softer topics and politics (shudder) into the mix and well.... That is going to hell quickly at the moment.

coppice:

--- Quote from: tggzzz on March 19, 2024, 03:14:06 pm ---
--- Quote from: coppice on March 19, 2024, 03:04:17 pm ---
--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on March 19, 2024, 02:50:47 pm ---I want to double down on one of my prior points.  A good textual document is more than enough for almost all of the topics mentioned in this thread.

--- End quote ---
For repair work the visual aspect of a video is its greatest strength. Most of what I want from those videos is to see how things fit together. For most things its complex. If learning from books was so great, why would people spend a fortune to learn from lectures in colleges? Really smart people learn quickly from book, while less able people gain massively from lectures. However, even the smartest people pick up new things faster with a combination of books and lectures.

--- End quote ---

Remember the old Haynes manuals showing how to repair your specific type of car?

Once upon a time they were full of clear drawings showing the essential points of the next step. Then photo reproduction became cheap and easy, so unclear visually confusing photos were used instead.

--- End quote ---
Why are so many of those photos so poorly lit, and poorly focussed? For understanding ideas, graphics are generally the best choice, but for seeing around the details of a specific product, and how awkwardly shaped things fit together, video can be a real boon. A key issue with the proliferation of how to videos for niche things, like specific product repair, is they just wouldn't exist if they were not as quick and easy to produce as a crude YouTube video. So, your choice is a less than ideal format, or nothing.

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