lukeprog comments on Preventing discussion from being watered down by an "endless September" user influx. - Less Wrong
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Comments (101)
What's the case for a video? Seems a little cheesy, IMO.
OK, but let's make sure they really do have some domain expertise in the area that they're leaving comments in, so they don't make us look bad. Link.
I like this idea. One potential logistical glitch: If the user isn't already familiar with reddit, they won't know what an orange envelope means and they may just see it as orange forever and never click on it.
People like videos and it makes the community more human to newcomers.
People like videos? I hate videos to the point that I will go out of my way to avoid links with videos in them, and I've seen this sentiment expressed by other people here.
I hate video because it goes too slow. I can read at least twice as fast as a video goes. It always feels like such an excruciating waste of time. Also, I can't use find in page. I am addicted to find in page. Ctrl-F and me are attached at the hip. Of all the pages I open, the proportion I read in entirety is very small. Ctrl-F is like half my way of navigating the internet. I'm really glad to see someone else express this. I thought i was the only one.
I like videos. They are more passive than written text and feel less cognitively demanding per unit time. In fact, I will often prefer to watch/listen-to a video/audio recording more than once in order to achieve the same level of retention as reading text in a concentrated fashion, thereby exchanging time for concentration-willpower.
I suppose I have nothing to complain about as long as the transcript is present and easy to get to.
I seem to recall lots of complaints on lukeprog's first Q&A about the fact that the answers were delivered in video format.
FYI he also provided a text transcript.
Some do and some don't.
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Transcripts are fairly expensive; patio11 pays for transcripts to be made for his podcasts (a big factor in why those submissions do well on Hacker News), but IIRC the quoted figure is north of $100. So you would pay... but would you pay enough?
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College students would be flaky and unreliable, and you'd want at least 2 for error-checking. You get what you pay for.
Confirmation bias and selection effects?
Echoing komponisto, my job is incredibly non demanding of my cognitive resources so I constantly listening to audiobooks, youtube channels, and TCC/TMS Lectures at 2x speed. Over the course of an 8 hr work day I can finish about 200 pages at reasonable comprehension.
I'd be curious to hear your evidence for this. In any case, even if there is conclusive evidence that internet users prefer video presentations over corresponding text presentations, it's not obvious that this trend extends to LWers or potential LWers.
Also, this seems to have been a flop. I suspect that if videos were a good fit for LW concept transmission, we'd have seen more success with that small experimental effort.
Those video experiments were very poorly produced. That's not the kind of video I have in mind. And video would of course only be there in addition to text.
I would have enjoyed and reccomended even poorly produced videos if you guys had bothered to extend them. I keep meaning to finish the last third or so of the sequences I haven't read, but their all over the place and it makes sense for me to start from the top. It'd be great if I could listen while doing other things. In my case, painting mostly, in other cases, probably cleaning, laundry, dishes, pet care and other activities that take up very low or no verbal mental resources.
Guys. It's not rocket science. You're smart. You have good content. Present it well. Or better. If you can't do that, hire someone who can. Get it out there. If you can't do that, hire someone who can.