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>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

by 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
  >The primary signals I use to judge the worth of a video are 1) its prominence in search results, This is not as good a signal because for many long-tail videos, the topmost video in the search results has a bad dislike-to-like ratio. >and 2) the video itself. This is not efficient use of time for the viewer because the point of a quick statistic is to avoid watching the video in the first place. >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, Totally opposite experience. For thousands of videos I've consumed that are not-politics and not-music such as tutorials, the bad dislike ratios were the most reliable indicators Youtube had for trash videos. To be clear, I'm talking about dislike ratios and not absolute counts. Maybe that's the source of the disagreement? E.g. if I see a video with hundreds or thousands of dislikes (absolute counts), it's not a problem unless the ratio is out of whack.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    The problem with this discussion is that (presumably) neither of us will ever have the data to back up our position. We can only disagree based on how we ourselves use YouTube, and maybe how we've observed friends and family using it. So what is the point? Unlike a lot of people I've discussed this with, I can at least respect your position as being based in some kind of believable and relatively well-developed use case. But nothing we've said here has even touched on the (alleged) negative externalities of visible downvote counts that (allegedly) motivated this change in the first place. And, again, we just don't have the data to understand the tradeoffs there. I entered this discussion because I really, honestly don't understand why so many people are so angry about this. And, despite your efforts, I still don't. I have no trouble believing that these legitimately bad, long-tail, high downvote count videos exist, but I still see them as exactly what my original comment characterized them as: an edge case. I guess I'm just looking for a bombshell that will make me understand, because that's how obvious the downvote count stans make this issue out to be. You aren't wrong just because you don't have such a bombshell, but you aren't going to convince me you're right just by telling me that the way I use YouTube is wrong.
    - 5y ago

by jasode 5y ago

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
>The primary signals I use to judge the worth of a video are 1) its prominence in search results, This is not as good a signal because for many long-tail videos, the topmost video in the search results has a bad dislike-to-like ratio. >and 2) the video itself. This is not efficient use of time for the viewer because the point of a quick statistic is to avoid watching the video in the first place. >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, Totally opposite experience. For thousands of videos I've consumed that are not-politics and not-music such as tutorials, the bad dislike ratios were the most reliable indicators Youtube had for trash videos. To be clear, I'm talking about dislike ratios and not absolute counts. Maybe that's the source of the disagreement? E.g. if I see a video with hundreds or thousands of dislikes (absolute counts), it's not a problem unless the ratio is out of whack.
- caconym_ 5y ago
  The problem with this discussion is that (presumably) neither of us will ever have the data to back up our position. We can only disagree based on how we ourselves use YouTube, and maybe how we've observed friends and family using it. So what is the point? Unlike a lot of people I've discussed this with, I can at least respect your position as being based in some kind of believable and relatively well-developed use case. But nothing we've said here has even touched on the (alleged) negative externalities of visible downvote counts that (allegedly) motivated this change in the first place. And, again, we just don't have the data to understand the tradeoffs there. I entered this discussion because I really, honestly don't understand why so many people are so angry about this. And, despite your efforts, I still don't. I have no trouble believing that these legitimately bad, long-tail, high downvote count videos exist, but I still see them as exactly what my original comment characterized them as: an edge case. I guess I'm just looking for a bombshell that will make me understand, because that's how obvious the downvote count stans make this issue out to be. You aren't wrong just because you don't have such a bombshell, but you aren't going to convince me you're right just by telling me that the way I use YouTube is wrong.
  - 5y ago