Poll: So, let's vent about Youtube a bit.

[Grimh]

I almost never complain about website redesigns but the new channel layout looks fucking atrocious.
This looks stylish and personalized. [http://www.youtube.com/user/TotalHalibut/videos?view=0]
This looks generic and cluttered. [http://www.youtube.com/show/twobestfriendsplay/videos?flow=grid&view=7]

 

[an annoyed writer]

Youtube has put so many thorns in my side that trying to list them all would be futile. I would not use it if it had not been for the fact that it is THE video site.

Unfortunately, I'm in the same camp. I've bitched about it time and time again, and they never listen. Honestly I'd like to see the return of things like the 5-star system that helped show a more nuanced reception to various videos. We're human, and we aren't so polar about every thing we hear or see.

 

[an annoyed writer]

I almost never complain about website redesigns but the new channel layout looks fucking atrocious.
This looks stylish and personalized. [http://www.youtube.com/user/TotalHalibut/videos?view=0]
This looks generic and cluttered. [http://www.youtube.com/show/twobestfriendsplay/videos?flow=grid&view=7]

That... that second one doesn't even look like a channel. it just looks like another subscription page but with a header and a video grid... and a completely white background. Now I'm really sad. My friends and I put a lot of work in making our channel backgrounds appealing, and not they're about to go. Fucking hell.

 

[Plucky]

I guess my issues with Youtube in recent memory is...

- Changing the Homepage to the extent that it was easy for front page stuff....but not much so for things like video lists and whatever.

- Removing the star rating and replacing it with Likes/Dislikes.....oh, and the fact that the bar is Green/Grey, not Green/Red, face it google, if someone knows a (scammer's/spammer's) video is bad, let the color remain so that it's more obvious.

- Removing visible tags, sure i could see that people did abuse them, but google still reconmends people still use them...which is a bit weird considering that people normally tagspam the hell out of things in the description field anyway, knowing what tags are what publically could help people find videos related to it when they discover it on a whim.

- Adding that recommended to you thing, looking seriously, what would cysts have to do with Sonic 3&Knuckles? Thankgod it wasn't showing more of the private stuff.

- Adding the ability to restrict what devices can view a video, sure people might be restricted by countries for Legal reasons, but there's no reason why to restrict phones from viewing some videos.

 

[Olas]

keep in mind YouTube doesn't owe you anything, its free entertainment.

That we have to sit through ads to see.

For those suffering buffering woes, try to set your local storage to unlimited:
Right-click on video -> settings -> Adobe Flash Player Settings - Set slider to unlimited.

Cool, this isn't gonna affect my browser negatively will it?

My biggest problem with youtube right now is the way they allow you to stick those annoying tags in every video that cover up part of the screen and distract you from what you're watching. Some people know how to use those responsibly and appropriately, 99% don't.

 

[JemothSkarii]

I agree with all of the above posts, but also this, my main problem with Youtube:

But considering that it also happens on other websites (except tThe Escapist) it's more likely my PC.

I think that's supposed to be DmC... am I correct?

OT: The buffering speed is a lot slower than it used to be for me. And sometimes videos just stop buffering halfway through and then end the video when I reach that point while watching, meaning I need to refresh the page and re-buffer it.

Also, while using "Large Player" at 480p, videos don't pre-buffer unless I switch to another resolution first. Unless it's just a permanent bug overall in Youtube's player that it doesn't pre-buffer at the starting resolution. The reason I use 480 to begin with is because it buffers more than 360p while loading faster than 720p on my slow internet. -_-

I don't use subscriptions or anything and rarely search for things from Youtube itself though, so I've not really got any issues with the newest layout.

Yeah it is Somebody modded the game so everyone had mustaches, and added 'memes' and 'mexican' imagery all over the backgrounds and characters. He plays the game with the spanish dub and changed the soundtrack with various Spanish music which serves to actually be better than the game's (in my honest opinion, but to be fair I wasn't a fan of the game anyway).

 

[teebeeohh]

regarding all the people who blame the layout on tablets: have you actually seen what youtube looks like on a tablet or are just assuming that this is the same problem as with windows 8? because the youtube design on my tablet does not look at all like the one on my desktop, sure they both have a white background but so does the textwindow i am writing in right now.

my main problem is with the thing defaulting to "what to watch" and the utter bullshit that makes that list and that when i watch videos in a playlist in fullscreen and minimize it for some reason youtube gets a heart attack and restarts the video i am watching and really likes to throw in a 30sec ad i can't skip at that point.
oh and stop blocking all the music videos in Germany, you are not stopping me from watching them, you just make it inconvenient.
and stop changing my settings, i really don't need 720p when watching a vlog or something.

 

[Bocaj2000]

The trouble is that Youtube has got a huge monopoly over the online video hosting service, so they can let their quality stagnate without losing profit.

Monopoly?

Blip.tv
Vimeo
Daily Motion
Meta Cafe
Veoh
Yfrog

There is no monopoly, my friend. They're just the most popular.

 

[Spambot 3000]

Top Comments. TOP Comments. TOP.
The two with the most thumbs up. Not the one one that just recently managed to scrape 3 thumbs up and now replaces the one with 150. Not the one that replied to the top comment. THE. TOP. COMMENTS. MOST THUMBS UP. FOR FUCKS SAKE.

This one I can answer. It replaces the top comments when they are no longer on the front page of the "show all comments" page thing.

Thanks for clearing that up mate.

 

[CriticalMiss]

They constantly change things for no good reason and the majority of the community is a vitriolic mosh-pit of twats and spam bots. I only really use Youtube for watching videos from channels I have subscribed to for years, there could be some great content on there but I don't have the team of highly trained experts required to discover these lost pockets of quality amidst the crap and arseholery.

 

[cikame]

I don't have any technical issues with youtube, and the quality of content being produced by creative people increases every day. But every redesign of the site over the years has made it slower, less organised and less responsive.

No i don't want to use my real name google, i come from a time on the internet where protecting your identity kept you safe, and i don't think the web has gotten any safer over time.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

It hasn't been getting objectively worse. I actually thought the last layout change was an improvement so this is still very subjective.

I don't know, I seriously believe that overall the layout has objectively become less efficient and less easy to use. I'm not saying that each layout change is objectively worse from the previous one, but the overall change has been a decline in quality.

Say if you compared the state of Youtube maybe 4 years ago with the state of it today, you could conclude that today's Youtube is literally less efficient and more difficult to use.

 

[FalloutJack]

EDIT: This WAS the thread where you can vent about youtube right?

Indeed.

For those suffering buffering woes, try to set your local storage to unlimited:
Right-click on video -> settings -> Adobe Flash Player Settings - Set slider to unlimited.

Does not make whole video buffer. Ergo, not good enough. Sorry.

Oh, and never put the word "bacon" in a poll. The Escapist really likes bacon.

I know, actually. It's an obligatory running gag.

OT: I also don't like Youtube' policy about removing videos at all. It harms NOTHING, you rubes. {A} It's able to be found elsewhere and {B} you don't REALLY think all the music and videos on there are somehow magically taking money away from people because it's on YOUR SITE, right? Ridiculous...

 

[Uratoh]

*ahem*

Screwtube.

That is all. Everything's pretty much been said here >_<

 

[Metropocalypse]

I just feel that today's youtube, while it has become very clean and slick even despite the ads, seems to be hiding a very dark side.

I mean, it feels very TV-like now. It's the absolute perfect middle ground between the television and the internet. You browse it like you would any website, yet with all its ads, celebrity endorsements, channels, high quality, well produced footage etc. it feels kinda like watching TV. However, the content itself isn't very TV-like, there are video blogs, comments, you can subscribe, the footage while high quality and well produced is still often home made and still wants to feel home made. Yet, all these music videos made by the industry don't seem to be out of place among all that. I think you get what I mean. It's all great like this I think. But there's just something about it, there's a clear divide between high profile and low profile youtube content. It feels like youtube when you go to it, what you are presented with is the high profile side of youtube, but presented to you as just what youtube is like. Then you get deeper into youtube and you find the lower profile stuff and it just feels like it's been hidden by the other stuff. Pushed away into the cracks. I don't even know why this bothers me.

It makes me think of the Aperture Science Laboratories. It's all very perfect and clean as you walk through it, but if you start digging around, you find all this stuff buried away that the rest of it didn't want you to see. Except, with youtube it's not so much that it's buried away because it didn't want you to see it, more because it just assumes you don't want to see it.

I think it's the culture that bothers me. I think I finally know what I'm getting at. Ha. There's this divide between the high profile "face" of youtube, and the other stuff. Yet the face of youtube seems mostly tailored to a particular kind of person. I think there also seems to be a kind of middle section of general helpful or funny videos that we all enjoy. But I guess it just bothers me because I used to associate youtube with finding loads of good stuff that I've never seen before. I find now if I stumble upon something new, it's just some really weird creepy video that I don't want to see (I'm sure we've all heard of "the weird bit of youtube"?)

 

[natster43]

I dislike that it doesn't fully load videos up when it's paused at the beginning, or keeping it all loaded. It is really annoying because if my internet drops now I can't just replay a song that I had loaded up for a while.

Also heh, I just saw Fight Club so I get the "His name is Robert Paulson" reference.

 

[n00beffect]

Umm, well... I'm kind of afraid of speaking-up, since I don't have- any of the OP's problems, and if most of you do, I'll probably end-up sounding like a douche-nozzle. There is one little tech problem I have with YT, and that's when the video's playing, at one point, it kind of breaks-apart. I don't know how to describe it exactly, but it gets a bit blurry and disjointed, like mosaic-y, for a couple of seconds, and then goes back to normal. But that's pretty much it.

I see a lot of people ripping on the lay-out, which, to be fair is a bit of an ass to get around. I really didn't see the point of changing it, but ffff knows that innovation these days is not bred from need, but from peer pressure. I.e. 'other sites are doing it so we have to, too.' - bollocks, but whatever. I got used to it, now.

 

[Sir Christopher McFarlane]

There is one thing I can say I like about the newest change: the channels are better now than in their Cosmic Panda incarnation. Unfortunately, some peple still insist to use the CP, because it allows you to set your background. But it doesn't matter what you set as background image. Nothing will look good with that boring gray and black rectangle in the middle of it. So why bother? The new design lets you visualize more videos at once in the videos page. It's white and red instead of black and gray. That's a positive change.
It's still not as good as their old channel design though. That one you can still use on Zippcast.com.

Playback options: why is this shit so limited? Why can't I set which size I want all my videos to load in and their viewing quality? Why must the video I loaded reload in High Definition when I turn on fullscreen? Now this was partially corrected. If you select the viewing quality on your video, it won't automatically go HD when in fullscreen mode. But you still have to do it for every video.

Something that was a problem for a long time was how Youtube decided for no reason that your playlist settings for auto-play were irrelevant in fullscreen. Autoplay was the default option in fullscreen. And it was the worst possible option. They've fixed this recently.

My biggest pet-peeve right now is the video not being on the centre of the screen anymore.

And this:

Adding to the list of technical problems with Youtube, sometimes when loading a video it will instead give me a version of the video with reduced duration. Example: if I click on a 5 minute video it might give me a 20 second copy of that video which only plays the first 20 seconds of it. The page has to be refreshed a few times until you can watch the damn video.

... not to mention the design and look of the site has been getting worse and worse.

I have to agree with this, its not just whining about change either, the site has objectively become worse to navigate.

Useful tips, I think:
1)Use the page www.youtube.com/my_subcriptions as your homepage. Bookmark it because Youtube removed the links that used to lead to it.
2)Use Youtube High Definition app for Firefox and Youtube Options for Google Chrome to keep your video sized according to your tastes.

 

[ATRAYA]

I've never had any of those problems you're talking about... Now, I agree YouTube has its issues, but it's mostly in its web layout and a few other little quirks it has. :/

 

[MajorTomServo]

Aww, I thought we were going to vent about the youtube community. :[

I was so ready to rant about the comments on every video game video being one guy named "LeMasterTroll" with a trollface avatar leaving a comment saying "this game sucks CoD is better #yoloswag" and five pages of people saying "Kill yourself, you worthless ****."