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The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

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Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#181

Post by charcircuit »

ant_li0n wrote: post #72
charcircuit wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having good thumbnails and tiles is just marketing. If you want to sell or get the word out about what you are offering it helps to have a good marketing effort. Yes, creating the material is a lot of work, but that doesn't mean that marketing is something that doesn't need hard work.

The problem is it isn't "good" thumbnails. It's that stupid fucking, "who farted?" face. Or more often for young women, it's "Uh-oh, I did a bad thing" face. I agree, race to the bottom of the brain stem. I sympathize with GP

It's not stupid if it works. It's not like it's YouTube who is deciding these types of thumbnails perform well. It's just that users engage with those kinds of thumbnails more.

The race is about making the best possible thumbnail based of empirical data and not aesthetics.

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#182

Post by lawgimenez »

There should be an alternative, I'm not a fan of new programmers relying on YouTube. I saw a code once from a fresh graduate who had a Java YouTuber for reference and followed the recommendation of the YouTuber that adding static to all the properties (variables and methods) is a good idea.

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#183

Post by threatofrain »

klabb3 wrote: post #94
LouisSayers wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a saying I've heard from Dean Graziosi (sales type guy). "Sell them what they want, give them what they need". I also dislike this whole game where you have to essentially mould yourself into this "mainstream click-baity character", but part of me recognises that if your goal is to sell, then you'd be wise to spend time on presenting your content in a way that is at least initially attention grabbi…

> but part of me recognises that if your goal is to sell , then you'd be wise to spend time on presenting your content in a way that is at least initially attention grabbing. The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want? Is there a way for YouTube to compensate for clickbaity titles and thumbnails? Are they incentivized to do so? Thinking back a…

I think the problem is not precisely in the salesman but in that in a free world, the only way to get people to listen is to be appealing and what appeals to us is often not that healthy. Terms like "engagement machine" makes it sound like it's the algorithms which are unhealthy, but the problem begins with the audience. If everyone wanted to watch math content all the time then we'd have math celebrities over YouTube.

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#184

Post by SuboptimalEng »

As a YouTuber who makes educational coding content, this is huge news! One of the biggest hurdles for making a course (for me) has been figuring out which platform to put it on. My entire audience is on YouTube so it makes total sense to put a course directly on my channel.

Most big creators have (some form of) courses on other platforms as they are a great source of income. For example, Ali Abdaal (back when he had 1M subs) made 40K - 60K[0] per month by making courses on SkillShare. Convincing your audience to buy a course on another platform may be a viable for big creators, but it is much harder for small creators like myself. Having courses directly on YouTube is the best alternative.

I've always wanted this feature, but never knew how to bring it up to anyone working at YouTube! If any one from YouTube is reading this feel free to reach out - I've got lots of ideas on this!

[0] https://youtu.be/VTTp5A-rSdc?t=2013

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#185

Post by klabb3 »

insightcheck wrote: post #115
klabb3 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but part of me recognises that if your goal is to sell , then you'd be wise to spend time on presenting your content in a way that is at least initially attention grabbing. The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want? Is there a way for YouTube to compensate for clickbaity titles and thumbnails? Are they incentivized to do so? Thinking back a…

> "The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want?" Regardless of what we as a society want, and even if YouTube never existed, it's the reality that salesmanship is always important to some extent. Persuasive communication is important even outside of business: it's key for academia to get grants, it's important for non-profits to get funding and…

Sales and politics are not avoidable, I agree with that. While a scientist might have to dreadfully deal with salesmanship now and then, it shouldn't be affecting the day to day. We have procedures to isolate these things from core business, so we can focus without the hyper-selfawareness of salesmen. If you have to be constantly getting the most eyeballs, attention, upvotes, in everything you're doing, it will change you and your work. Look at the conversational tricks that people use to get ahead at your (least) favorite social media, and see which type of personality is promoted there.

What I'm trying to say is, while the medium doesn't change core mechanics of human behavior, it distorts and accentuates – there is, for instance, a difference between tiktok and a novel. And we do have power of mediums, we can choose to engage in different types, and we can lobby for digital mediums to change. So pitting youtubers against the algorithm (just pimp your quantum physics lecture with an O-face thumbnail) isn't the only way forward. There's also "here's how YouTube could be better" or "we need a better alternative for this type of content". Unfortunately, we have almost 0 visibility and control over the algorithm so there's very little behavioral analysis that can be done.

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#186

Post by ngcc_hk »

djaychela wrote: post #42

I produce Music Tech-based educational content on YT. It started as a hobby and sideline to my main work (which at the time was classroom teaching of the same content). While I'm no longer working in classrooms (pandemic plus other reasons led to this), I'm still producing content, which I think is of good quality and worthwhile. The issue I have with it is that I refuse to produce attention-grabbing clickbaity title…

3b1b is really good. If one can explain that maths in my younger days …

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#187

Post by BrainVirus »

klabb3 wrote: post #94
LouisSayers wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a saying I've heard from Dean Graziosi (sales type guy). "Sell them what they want, give them what they need". I also dislike this whole game where you have to essentially mould yourself into this "mainstream click-baity character", but part of me recognises that if your goal is to sell, then you'd be wise to spend time on presenting your content in a way that is at least initially attention grabbi…

> but part of me recognises that if your goal is to sell , then you'd be wise to spend time on presenting your content in a way that is at least initially attention grabbing. The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want? Is there a way for YouTube to compensate for clickbaity titles and thumbnails? Are they incentivized to do so? Thinking back a…

>The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want?

That's what the world's biggest marketing company wants.

Otherwise, I think it's pretty obvious that the idea of rating artists, journalists, engineers and educators primarily on their salesmanship skills is a disaster in the making.

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#188

Post by klabb3 »

threatofrain wrote: post #183
klabb3 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but part of me recognises that if your goal is to sell , then you'd be wise to spend time on presenting your content in a way that is at least initially attention grabbing. The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want? Is there a way for YouTube to compensate for clickbaity titles and thumbnails? Are they incentivized to do so? Thinking back a…

I think the problem is not precisely in the salesman but in that in a free world, the only way to get people to listen is to be appealing and what appeals to us is often not that healthy. Terms like "engagement machine" makes it sound like it's the algorithms which are unhealthy, but the problem begins with the audience. If everyone wanted to watch math content all the time then we'd have math celebrities over YouTub…

> Terms like "engagement machine" makes it sound like it's the algorithms which are unhealthy

I stand by this term for various reasons. I think it's accurate and summarizes the current day social media status quo.

> but the problem begins with the audience

Yes, but humans are non-linear. Porn, for instance, is extremely powerful for attracting clicks, and we've figured out that we need to keep it separate. Even if people want some amount of porn, they want other things too and the best way is to not mix. Now say hate, or cheap entertainment, is not porn but not super far off. Similarly, that type of content tends to win the attention-game against math lectures, if presented side-by-side to the average amygdala. If we mix it all together, it's hard to focus. So.. I'm pretty skeptical to leave education to Youtube. Not only do they have all the cheap content, they're incentived to bombard you with it.

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#189

Post by Gigachad »

viraptor wrote: post #176
Gigachad wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many region level tlds require a legal presence. .au requires you to provide an Australian Business Number to register. It’s mostly the tiny islands that decide to cash in on fancy tlds who don’t care so much about providing them as a service to the small population.

It's pretty much never checked. You can search for a random name on https://abr.business.gov.au/ and use it.

It’s in the ToS though. You can register and at any moment you risk having your domain taken. Especially if you are a large business

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#190

Post by ncfausti »

cafed00d wrote: post #138

YouTube has had the content and engineering UI to beat Coursera or iTunes U since 2009. As a nerdy little kid from Bangalore, I remember _really_ learning how to write code from Mehran Sahami's programming paradigms videos from back in the day. (While we're on the subject of Mehran-appreiciate: we're all still geometers living in the times of Euclid OR we're all coders living in the times of Mehran? :)). Couple that…

I learned from Mehran as well. His course was absolutely life-changing for me. So thankful to have had the opportunity to learn from him, for free.
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