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I find it incredibly amusing and also very frustrating that all the top comments to this article are simply G+ re-shares that add absolutely no value to the com

I find it incredibly amusing and also very frustrating that all the top comments to this article are simply G+ re-shares that add absolutely no value to the comments section and simply more garbage the reader has to sift through in order to view legit comments. >>"Google has been doing some rethinking" thanks I already read that >>"#googleplusupdate #youtube " thank you that was valuable >>[another summary of the article I just read] This is also one of my major complaints with youtube. I find it hard enough just to follow a single youtube comment thread because: 1. Everyone appears to be speaking a dialect of english that is understandable seemingly to everyone but myself - some sort of strange mixture of 90's IRC speak with some klingon thrown in. 2. People are replying to users but the reply username doesn't match the display username. John Smith: That was a great video > Jane Smith: +Bubba I agree me: "who the heck is Jane talking to?" 3. Then finally there're all of those G+ reshares: John Smith: Look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/asdf83289 http://www.youtube.com/asdf83289 > John Smith's friend: I enjoyed that video </rant>

Pxtl 11y ago
> People are replying to users but the reply username doesn't match the display username. To be fair, Twitter suffers from this too.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  Maybe that's part of the reason I can never figure out what's going on when I follow someone's link to a conversation on Twitter.
  - smtddr 11y ago
    This is the bane of my existence when it comes to Twitter. Why are you even allowed to have 2 names anyway? The real one(the one in your url,.e.g. twitter.com/<realacctname>) and that $WHATEVER_STRING_YOU_WANT username? Idea, someone make an extension/greasemonkey that replaces all the free-form usernames with the actual account name so I can follow conversations without having to deal with all the mental bookkeeping of 2 names per user in conversational thread.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      Some of the reader apps will let you choose which one gets displayed, or displayed most prominently.
  - ycosynot 11y ago
    Twitter, I'll never understand... I have a theory you need the brain to be wired differently.
    - Pxtl 11y ago
      Meh, twitter makes sense to me when you understand two things: 1) It's fully public, and everything you're a fan of uses it. This makes it fantastic for building a feed of stuff you follow in tiny, tidy, bite-sized messages where one overactive wall-of-text can't slow you down as you drink from the firehose of info. 2) It came out of SMS. That means it keeps the limits of SMS, like short messages and usernames and whatnot. Imho they should break out of this box a bit - move tags and people out of the message body and swap names into the UI.
- justindocanto 11y ago
  Something twitter is doing right is the ability to expand the convo right there in the timeline. I'll give them that.
exodust 11y ago
Yep, it's frustrating. Youtube comments really are hopelessly broken. Re-shares are not good reading. They are written by users for their followers, not for the people on the actual video page. As you said, they have zero value. When I first noticed this way back when Google started publishing re-share comments under the videos, I would reply to those comments with remarks such as "I already knew that; yes I know what the video is; why are you repeating the video name"... and some people responded with "what are you talking about" because they didn't even know their re-share comments were being published on the video page. That's how broken the comments are.
- alwaysdoit 11y ago
  To be fair, it's not like YouTube comments were ever working well.
  - lmm 11y ago
    They were never great but they were better before.
    - rudolf0 11y ago
      If by "before" you mean 2008, then yes, arguably. Starting around 2009 I've started using various browser extensions to hide the comments, and I've never been happier.
      - mahouse 11y ago
        I don't understand. Can't you just... not read them?
        javajosh 11y ago
        That kind of software is easier to install, but less consistent.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
city41 11y ago
> Then finally there're all of those G+ reshares Facebook has the same problem. Any reasonably popular feed, such as I f'ing love science has completely worthless comments, because 99% are them just people tagging their friends.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Ouch! Leave my mother out of it!
makeitsuckless 11y ago
To be fair, to take the YouTube comment section, which in the days before G+ was known as the second greatest online cesspool after 4chan, and actually make it worse is an achievement of epic proportions.
fossuser 11y ago
The reply thing really gets me - reddit and HN threads are really easy to follow. Why is that so hard to do?
- azernik 11y ago
  Both Facebook and YouTube comments support threaded replies, but people tend not to use them. Either just a UI issue (the reply button is not highlighted) or a deeper structural issue (people know that top-level comments won't be reordered, so they think the conversation will still be readable) or a prestige issue (both YouTube and Facebook collapse all replies to top-level comments by default, making it MUCH less likely that your comment will be read as a reply.
  - fossuser 11y ago
    I think FB is different since it's a much smaller set of people and the replies go from the oldest down to the newest. There also tend to be fewer comments (it's easy to see who is replying to who) so threading is typically not necessary on FB.
  - sirmarksalot 11y ago
    Threaded replies are a somewhat recent addition in both cases. In the case of Facebook, it's only been available for a couple months, and with YouTube, maybe a year or two. People are probably just used to the old way.
    - NamTaf 11y ago
      FB's threaded replies also only go 1 deep.
      - dredmorbius 11y ago
        As do YouTube's IIRC. See Jeff Atwood of StackExchange on his thoughts re: threading. My thought is that HTML needs a comments primitive with date, author, subject, and references, with the resulting view (threaded, flat, collapsed, etc.) a client detail. Or, you know, Usenet, tin.
paps 11y ago
I highly recommend using Alien Tube [0]. It fetches reddit comments for the video, it's really well done. If it finds nothing, it displays the orignal YouTube comments. [0] https://alientube.co/ https://alientube.co/
- brownbat 11y ago
  Wow, it's like glimpsing the alternate universe where sidewiki worked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki Disaggregate content from commentary. That's the internet I want.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
You forgot to mention how the comment system bubbles up the most controversial and divisive comments, giving them the spotlight while productive conversations get lost in the noise.
drumdance 11y ago
Re: Youtube comments - http://www.theonion.com/article/local-idiot-to-post-comment-on-internet-2500 http://www.theonion.com/article/local-idiot-to-post-comment-...
amelius 11y ago
Since google knows everything, they could easily hide comments from people that speak a different "dialect" than you do. For example, they could show only comments from people that also frequently visit HN.
- nso95 11y ago
  Or rank them more highly
dzhiurgis 11y ago
They also lack translate button.
mcv 11y ago
Google+ is really its own thing, and very valuable as such, but Google keeps trying to make it into something it's not. You see Google+ interaction where you expect simple comments. I often see Youtube comments in Google+ threads because the thread happened to start with a video, and therefore automatically becomes a Youtube comment for barely literate Youtubers to spit their bile at. Or I see a G+er accidentally post a Youtube comment as a nonsensical G+ post. Google tries to treat everything the same, but they need to recognize that different things are different things. I don't want my G+ stuff on Youtube, and I don't want Youtube stuff on G+. You don't want G+ reshares in the article's comment section. I'm glad they finally seem to be coming to their senses. Would have been nice if that'd happened a few years earlier.
tripzilch 11y ago
Yes it's silly and annoying. Tumblr has very much the same program regarding reshares. Although I'm not sure if Tumblr even wants to foster discussion on their site--people do it any way, of course, quoting each other, but most Tumblr themes make these kind of discussions look awkward and hard to follow. Nested quotes get thinner and thinner, until you have just one word per line, sticking halfway out the container.

Pxtl 11y ago

> People are replying to users but the reply username doesn't match the display username. To be fair, Twitter suffers from this too.

marssaxman 11y ago
Maybe that's part of the reason I can never figure out what's going on when I follow someone's link to a conversation on Twitter.
- smtddr 11y ago
  This is the bane of my existence when it comes to Twitter. Why are you even allowed to have 2 names anyway? The real one(the one in your url,.e.g. twitter.com/<realacctname>) and that $WHATEVER_STRING_YOU_WANT username? Idea, someone make an extension/greasemonkey that replaces all the free-form usernames with the actual account name so I can follow conversations without having to deal with all the mental bookkeeping of 2 names per user in conversational thread.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    Some of the reader apps will let you choose which one gets displayed, or displayed most prominently.
- ycosynot 11y ago
  Twitter, I'll never understand... I have a theory you need the brain to be wired differently.
  - Pxtl 11y ago
    Meh, twitter makes sense to me when you understand two things: 1) It's fully public, and everything you're a fan of uses it. This makes it fantastic for building a feed of stuff you follow in tiny, tidy, bite-sized messages where one overactive wall-of-text can't slow you down as you drink from the firehose of info. 2) It came out of SMS. That means it keeps the limits of SMS, like short messages and usernames and whatnot. Imho they should break out of this box a bit - move tags and people out of the message body and swap names into the UI.
justindocanto 11y ago
Something twitter is doing right is the ability to expand the convo right there in the timeline. I'll give them that.

exodust 11y ago

Yep, it's frustrating. Youtube comments really are hopelessly broken. Re-shares are not good reading. They are written by users for their followers, not for the people on the actual video page. As you said, they have zero value. When I first noticed this way back when Google started publishing re-share comments under the videos, I would reply to those comments with remarks such as "I already knew that; yes I know what the video is; why are you repeating the video name"... and some people responded with "what are you talking about" because they didn't even know their re-share comments were being published on the video page. That's how broken the comments are.

alwaysdoit 11y ago
To be fair, it's not like YouTube comments were ever working well.
- lmm 11y ago
  They were never great but they were better before.
  - rudolf0 11y ago
    If by "before" you mean 2008, then yes, arguably. Starting around 2009 I've started using various browser extensions to hide the comments, and I've never been happier.
    - mahouse 11y ago
      I don't understand. Can't you just... not read them?
      - javajosh 11y ago
        That kind of software is easier to install, but less consistent.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]

city41 11y ago

> Then finally there're all of those G+ reshares Facebook has the same problem. Any reasonably popular feed, such as I f'ing love science has completely worthless comments, because 99% are them just people tagging their friends.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Ouch! Leave my mother out of it!

makeitsuckless 11y ago

To be fair, to take the YouTube comment section, which in the days before G+ was known as the second greatest online cesspool after 4chan, and actually make it worse is an achievement of epic proportions.

fossuser 11y ago

The reply thing really gets me - reddit and HN threads are really easy to follow. Why is that so hard to do?

azernik 11y ago
Both Facebook and YouTube comments support threaded replies, but people tend not to use them. Either just a UI issue (the reply button is not highlighted) or a deeper structural issue (people know that top-level comments won't be reordered, so they think the conversation will still be readable) or a prestige issue (both YouTube and Facebook collapse all replies to top-level comments by default, making it MUCH less likely that your comment will be read as a reply.
- fossuser 11y ago
  I think FB is different since it's a much smaller set of people and the replies go from the oldest down to the newest. There also tend to be fewer comments (it's easy to see who is replying to who) so threading is typically not necessary on FB.
- sirmarksalot 11y ago
  Threaded replies are a somewhat recent addition in both cases. In the case of Facebook, it's only been available for a couple months, and with YouTube, maybe a year or two. People are probably just used to the old way.
  - NamTaf 11y ago
    FB's threaded replies also only go 1 deep.
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      As do YouTube's IIRC. See Jeff Atwood of StackExchange on his thoughts re: threading. My thought is that HTML needs a comments primitive with date, author, subject, and references, with the resulting view (threaded, flat, collapsed, etc.) a client detail. Or, you know, Usenet, tin.

paps 11y ago

I highly recommend using Alien Tube [0]. It fetches reddit comments for the video, it's really well done. If it finds nothing, it displays the orignal YouTube comments. [0] https://alientube.co/ https://alientube.co/

brownbat 11y ago
Wow, it's like glimpsing the alternate universe where sidewiki worked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki Disaggregate content from commentary. That's the internet I want.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

You forgot to mention how the comment system bubbles up the most controversial and divisive comments, giving them the spotlight while productive conversations get lost in the noise.

drumdance 11y ago

Re: Youtube comments - http://www.theonion.com/article/local-idiot-to-post-comment-on-internet-2500 http://www.theonion.com/article/local-idiot-to-post-comment-...

amelius 11y ago

Since google knows everything, they could easily hide comments from people that speak a different "dialect" than you do. For example, they could show only comments from people that also frequently visit HN.

nso95 11y ago
Or rank them more highly

dzhiurgis 11y ago

They also lack translate button.

mcv 11y ago

Google+ is really its own thing, and very valuable as such, but Google keeps trying to make it into something it's not. You see Google+ interaction where you expect simple comments. I often see Youtube comments in Google+ threads because the thread happened to start with a video, and therefore automatically becomes a Youtube comment for barely literate Youtubers to spit their bile at. Or I see a G+er accidentally post a Youtube comment as a nonsensical G+ post. Google tries to treat everything the same, but they need to recognize that different things are different things. I don't want my G+ stuff on Youtube, and I don't want Youtube stuff on G+. You don't want G+ reshares in the article's comment section. I'm glad they finally seem to be coming to their senses. Would have been nice if that'd happened a few years earlier.

tripzilch 11y ago

Yes it's silly and annoying. Tumblr has very much the same program regarding reshares. Although I'm not sure if Tumblr even wants to foster discussion on their site--people do it any way, of course, quoting each other, but most Tumblr themes make these kind of discussions look awkward and hard to follow. Nested quotes get thinner and thinner, until you have just one word per line, sticking halfway out the container.