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> It baffles me how much people claim to care about a metric that seems only to be legitimately useful in the edgiest of edge cases, and has literally never be

> It baffles me how much people claim to care about a metric that seems only to be legitimately useful in the edgiest of edge cases, and has literally never been of any use to me. Different use cases for YouTube, presumably? If you're listening to music or watching well-established content creators, then dislikes are basically irrelevant. But if you're looking for a "how to" tutorial, dislikes and comments are the only way to quickly sort the good from the bad.

gary_0 5y ago
I think comments are less useful since the channel owner can arbitrarily delete and filter them (correct me if I'm wrong). So part of the outrage is that dislikes were the last semi-reliable metric left to check for garbage/troll videos.
- emkoemko 5y ago
  check out flat earth videos... they remove all comments that are critical and now with the dislike counter gone i guess the earth is flat.
caconym_ 5y ago
> But if you're looking for a "how to" tutorial, dislikes and comments are the only way to quickly sort the good from the bad. This is the "edge case" (not the best term for it, but whatever) I'm talking about, but I still don't really buy it. There are a lot of signals for how worthwhile a video is going to be, and frankly I'd rank likes/dislikes as the least useful one, mostly because they provide no context and aren't normalized to the video's view count. If we see an epidemic of amateur electricians getting zapped, etcetera, I suppose YouTube will have some egg on its face. But somehow I don't think that's going to happen.
- emkoemko 5y ago
  so your telling me its fine to leave only likes for a video showing you how to make a DIY air conditioner ? using a bucket full of dry ice and a fan? 100% this will end up killing someone.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Content likely to end up killing someone should be flagged and removed, not community-downvoted.
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      That particular example may have been exaggerated or extreme, but I think the point still stands. Someone just commented this "check out flat earth videos... they remove all comments that are critical and now with the dislike counter gone i guess the earth is flat.". Indeed. In this case for example it should not be flagged, but down-voted by the community.
      - caconym_ 5y ago
        I honestly couldn't tell whether that flat earth comment was being ironic or not, but I think it's an interesting case study either way. Is a visible YouTube downvote count really the only thing standing between a meaningful number of people and belief that the Earth is flat? I don't really buy it.
        johnisgood 5y ago
        > Is a visible YouTube downvote count really the only thing standing between a meaningful number of people and belief that the Earth is flat? I do not think so either, to be honest, but perhaps there may be something to it.
- jasode 5y ago
  >There are a lot of signals for how worthwhile a video is going to be, and frankly I'd rank likes/dislikes as the least useful one, mostly because they provide no context and aren't normalized to the video's view count. What are those other signals to help filter quality? Because in my experience, the dislike-to-likes ratio is the #1 statistical signal. It beats the #likes/#views ratio which is far weaker. Comments are not a better signal because (1) they can be deleted by the channel and (2) they take more work to scroll through than just looking at the public dislikes number. It doesn't even matter that dislikes don't have "context" (do you mean "downvote reasons"?). To me, the context is the video itself. If I come across a plumbing how-to and it has more dislikes than likes, it's a junk video. MKBHD is another youtuber that explains the usefulness of dislikes counts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaaJyRvvaq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaaJyRvvaq8 EDIT add: also note in the MKBHD video the comments from other famous youtube creators that they also depend on public dislike stats when they themselves consume videos.
  - tqi 5y ago
    I watch how-to videos a lot, and I think dislikes are not that useful. In my case either it's either A) a common topic, and I just go by total view count and watch the top 3-5 videos or B) it's a super niche topic and I watch all 1-5 videos available. It feels like people are imagining some fantasy scenario where there are hundreds of similar videos with not that many views but very different vote count patternsm...
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    The primary signals I use to judge the worth of a video are 1) its prominence in search results, and 2) the video itself. This is because dislike counts are in my experience extremely unreliable—they may be elevated for stupid and irrelevant reasons on a really great video, or they may not be significantly elevated on a video that is very much not worth my time. Anecdotally (though no more so than any other account in these comments, AFAICT), I've found this to be true even on videos with relatively objective subject matter.
    - jasode 5y ago
zuminator 5y ago
Perhaps not just different use cases but different user types as well. By that I mean for example, I knew of many people who were outraged and dismayed when RSS feeds started to disappear from websites. They belonged to a class of individual who prefers things to be categorized as granularly as possible. That kind of person is highly upset when their categorizing toolset is downsized. But other people never bother with those tools, don't care if they're eliminated, and frankly find it hard to sympathize with their hypercategorizing comrades.

gary_0 5y ago

I think comments are less useful since the channel owner can arbitrarily delete and filter them (correct me if I'm wrong). So part of the outrage is that dislikes were the last semi-reliable metric left to check for garbage/troll videos.

emkoemko 5y ago
check out flat earth videos... they remove all comments that are critical and now with the dislike counter gone i guess the earth is flat.

caconym_ 5y ago

> But if you're looking for a "how to" tutorial, dislikes and comments are the only way to quickly sort the good from the bad. This is the "edge case" (not the best term for it, but whatever) I'm talking about, but I still don't really buy it. There are a lot of signals for how worthwhile a video is going to be, and frankly I'd rank likes/dislikes as the least useful one, mostly because they provide no context and aren't normalized to the video's view count. If we see an epidemic of amateur electricians getting zapped, etcetera, I suppose YouTube will have some egg on its face. But somehow I don't think that's going to happen.

emkoemko 5y ago
so your telling me its fine to leave only likes for a video showing you how to make a DIY air conditioner ? using a bucket full of dry ice and a fan? 100% this will end up killing someone.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Content likely to end up killing someone should be flagged and removed, not community-downvoted.
  - johnisgood 5y ago
    That particular example may have been exaggerated or extreme, but I think the point still stands. Someone just commented this "check out flat earth videos... they remove all comments that are critical and now with the dislike counter gone i guess the earth is flat.". Indeed. In this case for example it should not be flagged, but down-voted by the community.
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      I honestly couldn't tell whether that flat earth comment was being ironic or not, but I think it's an interesting case study either way. Is a visible YouTube downvote count really the only thing standing between a meaningful number of people and belief that the Earth is flat? I don't really buy it.
      - johnisgood 5y ago
        > Is a visible YouTube downvote count really the only thing standing between a meaningful number of people and belief that the Earth is flat? I do not think so either, to be honest, but perhaps there may be something to it.
jasode 5y ago
>There are a lot of signals for how worthwhile a video is going to be, and frankly I'd rank likes/dislikes as the least useful one, mostly because they provide no context and aren't normalized to the video's view count. What are those other signals to help filter quality? Because in my experience, the dislike-to-likes ratio is the #1 statistical signal. It beats the #likes/#views ratio which is far weaker. Comments are not a better signal because (1) they can be deleted by the channel and (2) they take more work to scroll through than just looking at the public dislikes number. It doesn't even matter that dislikes don't have "context" (do you mean "downvote reasons"?). To me, the context is the video itself. If I come across a plumbing how-to and it has more dislikes than likes, it's a junk video. MKBHD is another youtuber that explains the usefulness of dislikes counts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaaJyRvvaq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaaJyRvvaq8 EDIT add: also note in the MKBHD video the comments from other famous youtube creators that they also depend on public dislike stats when they themselves consume videos.
- tqi 5y ago
  I watch how-to videos a lot, and I think dislikes are not that useful. In my case either it's either A) a common topic, and I just go by total view count and watch the top 3-5 videos or B) it's a super niche topic and I watch all 1-5 videos available. It feels like people are imagining some fantasy scenario where there are hundreds of similar videos with not that many views but very different vote count patternsm...
- caconym_ 5y ago
  The primary signals I use to judge the worth of a video are 1) its prominence in search results, and 2) the video itself. This is because dislike counts are in my experience extremely unreliable—they may be elevated for stupid and irrelevant reasons on a really great video, or they may not be significantly elevated on a video that is very much not worth my time. Anecdotally (though no more so than any other account in these comments, AFAICT), I've found this to be true even on videos with relatively objective subject matter.
  - jasode 5y ago

zuminator 5y ago

Perhaps not just different use cases but different user types as well. By that I mean for example, I knew of many people who were outraged and dismayed when RSS feeds started to disappear from websites. They belonged to a class of individual who prefers things to be categorized as granularly as possible. That kind of person is highly upset when their categorizing toolset is downsized. But other people never bother with those tools, don't care if they're eliminated, and frankly find it hard to sympathize with their hypercategorizing comrades.