Valuable content or?

[mklotz]

That's hilarious!

Dorothy is one of my favorites. I especially appreciate her cheery, upbeat outlook on life...

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

[Crusty]

Or, as Red Skelton said "When I wake up and if I don't see flowers and hear people singing hymns I go ahead and get up."

[Jon]

Bigger question is do we do something actionable?

The only vids that irk me in a commercial content way are the blatant sponsored ones that contain obvious evidence that tool companies have approached the video maker for sponsored content, or they're doing Amazon Affiliate work (basically anyone can sell Amazon's stuff, using a special "affiliate" link, and then they get a cut of the sales).

We can do stuff like move more videos into the Basic Homemade Tools subforum.

But the net result of us recruiting YTers has been very positive.

What helps me is to simply watch YT videos at faster speeds. I usually adjust to 1.25 or 1.5 via the cog menu at the bottom-right. Once you gain exposure to a lot of web content, especially videos, tolerance for long-windedness rapidly diminishes, both in consuming content, and even in consuming real life conversations. In net slang it's known as GTTFP.

[Crusty]

Don't pay any attention to me - I'm an old curmudgeon. I'll learn to be more selective about where I invest my time.

It would help if more users were to use the voting controls to downrate posts which are a waste of time and uprate posts that are worthwhile and we'd have an indication of the hive mind's value of them at a glance.

[Jon]

That's a very valid point. We have an upvote (Thanks) function, but no downvote function. I hate to say it, but this is the same issue with Facebook.

[Crusty]

Looks to me like the rating scale goes from bad to good (one star to five stars, three stars is median) and that's an adequate system for me. We just need more users to take the additional few seconds to add their rating.

[Jon]

Another good point. However, I can say unequivocally, speaking from extraordinary experience (I've personally posted on hundreds of forums), that yes, the star rating scales are almost universally ignored across forums.

I'm not sure why. Could be lack of prominence of the rating system. Could also be that upvote/downvote is clearer than 1-5 star rating (most posts get 0 star ratings; is that better or worse than 1 star?). For example, someone was just explaining to me last week that the famous Michelin star restaurant rating system is assigned one star at a time. Thus, to get 1 Michelin star is actually quite an honor.

[Crusty]

I think users just need to be aware that the rating feature exists and to take a more active role in keeping this site useful and high quality. Anyone that uses machine tools can easily handle the complexity of selecting between one and five stars and doesn't need an up/down cartoon thumb.

For practice, posters can add their own rating to this thread and become familiar with it. As more threads are rated by users the forum overall becomes more useful. It's an easy way of giving back to this community.

[shopandmath]

What is the (the jealpaul issue) I am new don't know the reference ?
and sorry on may last video post I did the (text under the video pleading for the reader to become a subscriber)
that will not happen again
Ray

[Jon]

You're allowed to solicit subscribers. The core issue here is low quality videos (yours are NOT low quality) that are aggressively accompanied by calls to subscribe.

The jealpaul issue involved a guy copying others' videos, and claiming them as his own. More: Update on jealpaul video copying and banning