Wanted to ask you about this article, how do you remember the early days of the internet (I was sadly too young at that time). Do you wish it back? And do you think it can ever be like that again? I would be very interested

  • bstix@feddit.dk
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    1 year ago

    I miss written tutorials. I hate how every tutorial is a YouTube now. I don’t want to watch 15 minutes and forget to pay attention for the second that has the detail that I am missing or it just doesn’t show. Even short tutorials are 3 minutes when it could have been a ten second read. I want to skim a page and go directly to the point. Has writing really become that hard to do?

    • Mechanismatic@lemmy.ml
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      Video title: “How to unlock the demon door on the fourth level of Demon Smasher Elite”

      “Hello, video game fans! Don’t forget to like and subscribe! Last week I posted a video that isn’t relevant to this video, but I need to drag out the time on this one to game the algorithm, so I’m going to rehash and plug that video. I’m going to shout out to my Patreon subscribers with ridiculous usernames I won’t pronounce well. Now let’s get to the part you’ve waiting for: I’m going to play through the entire thirty minutes worth of level four before you get to the demon door and I will stop to make useless commentary on the bad guys you encounter. Okay, now you’ve skipped forward to what looks like the area before the demon door part of the stage, but I’m going to talk about some unrelated anecdote about this game or maybe the game devs, and then plug my Patreon account and mention a completely different game that I’ll be streaming next. Oh and here’s the five seconds of the video you wanted to see when I tell you to click the right mouse button on the hidden lever next to the demon door in order to open it, except you aren’t seeing it because you skipped forward too far and gave up. Don’t forget to like and subscribe! This video has been brought to you by Nord VPN.”

      • Nepenthe@kbin.social
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        Now let’s get to the part you’ve waiting for: I’m going to play through the entire thirty minutes worth of level four before you get to the demon door and I will stop to make useless commentary on the bad guys you encounter.

        About a month ago, I’d gotten back to replaying Suikoden Tactics, and there’s this whole quest-accepting mechanic that’s the easiest way to rack up skill points. But one of them is a series of “go get X out of the murder death ruins for me.”

        That place is pure ass and permadeath is a thing, so I’m not just going to go jaunting down to the final floor because I’m bored. And for the life of me, I could not remember which floor whatever item was even on in order to know whether it was worth trying for right now.

        This game is old enough that there are almost no discussions about it. I’m rooting through abandoned forums from 2005 looking for gems. God bless forums from 2005 btw.

        Somehow, there is a single video on this subject. It is a series of videos as the youtuber fights through the entire dungeon in one go. There is commentary. There are no timestamps. He does not split the videos according to floor. The information I’m looking for is somewhere in here, but I have zero guarantee he’s even treasure hunting, so he may not mention it.

        I could have cried.

    • Anders429@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Drives me crazy when I see this kind of format for things like programming. Nothing like pausing the video and trying to see what their code says.

      • Nepenthe@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I was all set to start bitching about the obligatory 10-15 minutes of “older, medicated suburban housewife shows off her whole yarn closet, every needle, which needle she likes (it’s just pretty), her fingernails, pushes her state-mandated store, and then finishes off with an internet recipe story about how her gramgram was fleeing the war and had to knit jasmine stitch backwards to survive…before fucking up the stitch and never editing that part out. But it’s ok because her hands were in the way the whole time anyway.”

        But I think you’ve found the only thing that has me beat.

        I will at least use this time to implore any knitting/crochet peeps on the fediverse that if you or someone you love is uploading how-to videos anywhere on the web…SHOW ME THE DAMN STITCH SO I CAN LEAVE. I HAVE PROJECTS, I DO NOT CARE.

        • swan_pr@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I’ll usually go with the length of the video in cases like this. Anything above 5 minutes is a red flag!

          • Nepenthe@kbin.social
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            I still remember a video I found a year ago that was just barely over a whole minute. It was a guy doing one single really clear cable stitch in complete silence, and then the video cuts out.

            I do not know who they are, but I will vouch for that man before god.

            Doing a cursory search to see if I can find it again, the second video suggested to me is 26:44 long.

            • swan_pr@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              It probably disappeared into the ether because it was too short or lacked a backdrop of dried flowers and a cup of tea.

          • deejay4am@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            YT algorithm favors videos that are at least 10 minutes (they fit more ads in) so those get recommended more. As a result, runtimes get padded with fluff so you get recommended to more viewers.

            • flipthetube@lemmy.world
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              That’s disgusting.

              I feel like relying on the algorithms completely misses the human elements.

              If I need an answer to something, I want my top results to be short and sweet. If I want a documentary or dj set, I don’t want a 3-10 minute version.

            • @4am @swan_pr
              For me, it depends on the topic of the video.
              E.g. there are “full courses” about “learning HTML/CSS” or “Svelte” or anything frontend development related, that work for me.

              And I don’t watch any youtube video on youtube anymore, but only use an invidious server, like yewtu.be - works like a charme (most of the time).

              No ads, no tracking, no algorithm \o/

              • swan_pr@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                Of course, it all depends on the context. A tutorial for a specific knitting stitch can be done in under 5 minutes, other stuff not so much! There was also an interesting thread somewhere yesterday asking why don’t people use their subscription feed on YT and the answers were a good representation of the user base here, ie: most do use it and avoid the algo at all costs! So I think we’re all on the same page here, we search and use YT in a way that is most efficient but not the most common :)

          • Nepenthe@kbin.social
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            I assume it all works the same on mastodon, if it’s showing up ok, so:

            Bold is 2 asterisks on either side
            like ** this **

            Italics is either one asterisk on each side like * this * or underscores _ like this _ (does this show up italicized for you?)

            • Strikethrough is ~~ two tildes ~~ and looks like this

            Obviously just remove the spaces in between the symbols and letters, because I can’t figure out yet how to stop markdown from working on here any other way, in order to depict it precisely

          • Nepenthe@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Ok, explain. Link me. I’ve been turning this over in my head. I cannot fathom what “fabric artist trading card” could possibly be

      • janananena@det.social
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        @Anders429 @bstix lol actually i watch videos for programming sometimes - what is really bad is getting a good look at that one knitting stitch that has a six letter abbreviation and only the worst text explanations WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH TAKING A PICTURE OF THIS

    • DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social
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      1996 is on the latter end of what I consider the early internet, but I really miss the Video Game FAQ Archive (GameFAQs) which was murdered by a thousand cuts culminating in the death of the gamefaqs.com domain. FAQs used to be so good, these days the same information is dispersed over 50 pages of an HTML “guide” that is more ads than information, and often for less complete information, if it’s not just a YouTube video that’s even worse and shows you things but doesn’t explain them at all.

    • SnowBunting@lemmy.ml
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      Same. I missed those days where you can just control F to the part of the page and get the info you wanted. Now it’s wait for 2 ads to play, scroll through the intro and then a bunch of scrubbing to find it.

    • noctiswhole@kbin.social
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      Has writing really become that hard to do?

      It’s probably more to do with discoverability and monetization. I’m generalizing a ton, but I feel like there isn’t even a ton of super useful YouTube tutorials outside of beginner content because that gets the most views.

    • gaydarless@lemmy.ca
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      YES, this is such a peeve for me!!! I’ve developed an aversion to viewing video content unless it’s for something I truly need to see done. And even then, I’m more likely to check wikihow and endure their gifs than I am to watch someone’s video. It’s just so overdone.

    • ProtonBadger@kbin.social
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      Yeah, you could skim pages, or read thoroughly, search in the text, easily jump back to the previous paragraph to skim a bit again, google (or DDG) for terms you remember from an article to find it again, etc.

      Not just tutorials, I enjoyed reading tech or product reviews, like the original Anandtech when Anand was there, that all seems to be going the way of obnoxious youtubers.

    • rrwo@fosstodon.org
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      @bstix @Provider

      They’re awful if you are looking for something that requires you to type commands into a keyboard or code into an editor.

      The video window needs to be large enough to read it, and even then, you can’t copy/paste anything from a video.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        Yes. Unfortunately many comments are the same, because the mastodon users can’t see each others replies. This comment somehow got trendy over there.

        My inbox has about 200 replies telling me about video monetization and 100 just tagging my username.

    • Kara Goldfinch@dragonscave.space
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      @bstix Yes. Also when you’re blind, software tutorials in particular are either 15 minutes of nothing but music, or someone going “to do x thing, all you need to do is click this button, drag this slider to here, click this until it says this, type this into there, and you’re done.”

    • Stygian Lizard@mindly.social
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      @bstix @Provider it drives me insane that I can’t type text into a box and have an article come back to me. I’ve found videos that explained a thing beautifully, and then I can never find it again because the phrase I remember wasn’t in the tags.

    • Ryan Mann@iaccessibility.social
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      @bstix @TechEnthusiast 100% This is especially annoying when I’m trying to find out how to do something in Python or whatever programming language I happen to be playing with. I am blind and use a screen reader. If the text is written, I can review word by word, line by line, character by character, ETC. This is important when trying to learn programming.

    • Finnan Haddie@med-mastodon.com
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      @bstix @Provider God yes. I recently bought a bottle of rum that has a ridiculous ball valve built into the neck so my first attempt to pour it yielded nothing. Googled it & a YT video came up—something ridiculous like 7 minutes or longer—that could have been handled by a single sentence on the label. (Or better yet, not using a ball valve)

    • Sarah Russell@disabled.social
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      @bstix The ones that annoy me are the youTube videos that are text on the video but just a music overlay… no verbal instructions at all and since Ic an’t see the video period it is useless to me.

    • Zeolith :AuVerify:@autistics.life
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      @bstix @Provider

      Oh gosh, this! I am way better at picking up what is relevant to me in a text article while scanning a text than waiting for thing to happen in a video. It’s so infuriating sometimes. Also, video streaming is using so much data that I would rather not do it when I am using mobile internet… So yeah, bring back text based tutorials…

    • tmk@social.lugal.io
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      @bstix @Provider it really makes it hard to learn at your own pace. Rewinding the same part of a tutorial video over and over again to get what a particular section is saying is just tedious compared to a quick Alt+Tab to reread a paragraph.

    • Pal@mastodon.online
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      @bstix @Provider I’m dyslexic and even I can’t stand these Youtube tutorials. The irony is probably that the script they write to make said tutorial is likely many times more useful than the tutorial itself, just because it’s a video…

    • FoolishOwl@social.coop
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      @bstix @Provider I was trying to work through an online class on Python, and every hour video included ten minutes of encouraging the viewer to keep at it, and five minutes of lame puns. The actual instruction was fine, but text would have been much easier.

    • Nazo@mastodon.social
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      @bstix @Provider oh god I hate it when I try to look something up and the only thing I can find is some awkward person going “so uh, you uh, click on this and then, uh, type uh that.” Like why can’t they just type somewhere in a blog or forum or something “type X in a console”?

    • richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one
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      The worst are the videos that are little more than a Windows desktop and a syntesized voice of a tutorial that could be written. Additional negative points for instructions writen on Notepad on the screen on that video.

    • cowvin@retro.pizza
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      @bstix @Provider I read considerably faster than people talk, so written information is a lot faster for me to get. Written tutorials are way better too because you can easily re-read difficult parts.

    • @bstix @Provider I can’t see any of the responses (must be a mastodon thing) but I can tell you that this not the first time I’ve seen this complaint and it has had an impact: I had several tutorials to produce this summer and planned on doing them as videos. As the summer approached I saw comments like this and switched to blog posts instead. So, I just wanted to let you know you’re not shouting into the void.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        I can’t see any of the responses (must be a mastodon thing)

        This explains a lot. Most of the replies to this comment here on Lemmy are from Mastodon users stating the same thing about video monetization.

        There’s a few good comments from people who actually do need video tutorials for crafting, sports and DIY, or from being dyslexic, but most don’t like the YouTube format.

        One big hurdle for written blogs is to attract readers when Googles search engine has a preference for videos that makes them more money.

    • Mikal with a k@sfba.social
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      @bstix

      OMFG this so much. Especially since most tutorials are ponderously slow and tedious. At the other extreme, are the ones with no subtitles and no sound where you are expected to follow a cursor flying around the screen clicking on things and are supposed to understand what happens. Those in particular should die in a fire.

    • Sam Hall@mas.to
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      @bstix @Provider
      Totally agree, it’s awful. I recently noticed that the YouTube android app seems to have built in auto-transcription that is often (but not always) searchable. I haven’t been able to find this on the desktop webpage, only on the mobile app.

    • Glyph@mastodon.social
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      @bstix @Provider @gvwilson writing is as hard as it ever was, but monetization of ad-hoc tutorial content is far easier and more lucrative on youtube. People are literally being paid to pollute your search results with video.

      I’m actually optimistic; I think eventually youtube will face too much flak for this kind of garbage, it’ll start affecting viewership, they’ll tweak the algorithm or the partner program to punish bad tutorials and there’ll be a renaissance of the written stuff.

    • WhatTheChel@mas.to
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      @bstix @Provider This! I’m not sure who is more at fault. Is it that writers don’t want to write or that readers don’t want to read (causing writers to shift from writing)? Either way it is torture. I’m a fast reader. Videos go at their own agonizing pace. Who thought this was a good idea???

    • Breefolk@mastodon.social
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      @bstix @Provider Same. I hate video tutorials. I play a lot of video games and sometimes I need to look something up, which sometimes means I get lucky and someone has written a decent walkthrough down, but often times means I have to start and stop a damn video over and over and over to get the information at the pace I need.

    • J. Steven York@mastodon.social
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      @bstix @Provider I was one of the guys who used to write those, for Microsoft and others. I was at Microsoft when the boom dropped and most and most written documentation projects in favor of minimal on line help files and CBT (pre-video scripted feature demonstrations. The project (the Word for Windows technical manual) was shuffled to Microsoft Press, which didn’t want it, leaving me in the middle. Fun.

    • Dr. Tineke D'Haeseleer@mstdn.social
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      @bstix couldn’t agree more!

      Most of my students preferred video, even if with very few exceptions slides + text was better for them (for the stuff we did).

      Also *good* video takes forever to make, good text+image tutorials slightly less forever but the search is much easier!

    • Kristoffer Lawson@attractive.space
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      @bstix damn, I thought I was alone with this. It’s incredibly frustrating that everything is a bloody YouTube. My theory is that people dream of those €€€s coming in from viewers.

    • deep-sea wealthman@mastodon.world
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      @bstix @Provider I’ve been a programmer for over a decade. I inevitably spend part of every day searching the web for very specific or very general problems. Not once have I watched a video to find those answers. There is nothing more boring than watching someone else write a todo list app (seriously, stop making these) for exactly 10:01 minutes.

    • Mauve 👁💜@mastodon.mauve.moe
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      @bstix @Provider I’m guessing a big part of it is that writing blog posts doesn’t pay ad revenue these days. Also most text tutorials are drowned out by algospam and your content will probably get scraped and reposted with better SEO and worse ads the moment it’s out. :/

    • patter@meow.social
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      @bstix @Provider yes, even written tutorials with a few photos.

      Also, I cant remember coming across a written tutorial & abandoning it because of how it’s written, but there’s been multiple times I’ve left a video because I can’t listen to that presenter any more.

    • Norman Wilson@mstdn.ca
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      @bstix @Provider Strongly endorsed. For me, watching a video is possibly the least-effective way to learn how to do something. Learn to write or find someone to write for you if you want me to use your stuff.

    • 𝕸𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔫@dice.camp
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      @bstix Yea, searching is basically slow, and unsearchable.

      However, a proper setup tutorial has the virtue of being complete. People will typically forget to write ‘import random’ in their python docs, or ‘systemctl restart transmission’, because they think it’s obvious.

      With video tutorials, you get the whole thing, and you can literally see where you’re deviating from the script.

      Of course that’s possible with written text, but I seldom find it.

    • Red@mastodon.gamedev.place
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      @bstix @Provider Trying to copy snippets of code to try / adapt out of the video sucks as well. I often don’t need/want to download an entire sample project from a link in the description.
      Plus, given time constraints, I occasionally try to grab a few moments for tutorials while hanging out with family, sitting at a restaurant, or whatever else, so I’d have to watch videos muted as well.
      Definitely always look for written form.

    • Shambolic Matter@mastodon.social
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      @bstix @Provider A 3 minute video where someone shows you how to change your car’s headlights does tend to be better than a text description.

      But it’s no longer a 3 minute video. It’s 25 minutes with a 5 minute sponsor segment, 15 minutes of faffing about, 3 minutes to plug pateron, 1 minute of intro and outro, and then 1 minute where they show the changing of the lightbulb but they cut away to a wide shot so the host can be shown clowning around and you can’t tell what he did.

    • @bstix I don’t think it’s because writing things is hard but people have become increasingly passive. Why sit down and read for an hour when you can just have someone explain it to you in only 15 minutes

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        Personally I prefer to go at my own pace when I have to learn something. Videos just aren’t good for that.

    • Ralf Herrmann@typo.social
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      @bstix @Provider From a creator’s perspective that sounds rather ungrateful. Why not be happy that people take the time to create free tutorials at all – in the way they see fit? We look for tutorials because they shorten the time we would otherwise need to figure things out. So it’s weird to say “you helped me save 2 hours of trial-and-error, but it took 3 minutes instead of 1, so damn you!”.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        I get what you’re saying; but it often feels like a “bears favour”. The content creator wants to help and promises to help, but end up just wasting my time and not helping at all. It’s a lot easier to glance a document or webpage to see if it contains the thing you’re interested in, whereas in a video you’ll have to sit through it all before you can tell if it even contains the information.

    • Chancerubbage@mastodon.social
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      @bstix @WideAperture

      It has always been an issue for published tech writing, that it is often obsolete by the time it hits the shelf.

      But the bigger problem is that developers began to nurture an ‘oh, they’ll figure it out’ attitude and stopped thinking of instructions as necessary.

      My biggest issue is interfaces have become some international secret code of mystery glyphs hiding functions several levels down in unexpected corners.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        I mean written on a webpage, not published in book. The early Internet had lots of pages where people would write tutorials about their hobbies and tech instead of filming themselves mumbling into a headset.