Thumbs up/down

[Xaromir]

I think that's actually a interesting topic so i thought i post it,

discussing things on youtube sucks anyway.

Someone wondered why someone thumbed down Marc's latest video on youtube for no obvious reason.

I told him/her that i think that it's to get rid of recommendations in which they are not interested in.

You all know it, you maybe came across a video about X and now your recommendations box is flooded with stuff about X,

but you are not really interested, my theory is that giving some of those a thumb down will help getting rid of these,

and prevent that more videos about X will get recommended.

I always had the feeling that it actually works well when just clicking them away does not cut it.

I think that others also think like that, or at least that's how i explain it to myself,

why some videos got thumbed down a lot while delivering good quality footage, staying within their title,

and not having any kind of arguable material in them, provide no opinion or other things you maybe could dislike / disagree with.

Unless you are not interested in the type of content the video offers.

Maybe a good example could be "kitten vs. watermelon".

It's fun, unobtrusive, delivers what it's promising, while not having anything in it that one could argue about,

it's just a cat playing with a water melon, at this point 10.000 gave thumbs up but also 900 thumbed it down.

Why? In the comments someone wrote "hate cats." i doubt he got there by searching for cats.

Apparently Marc got his doubts. I always explained it to myself the way i described,

but this got me thinking. What are your opinions on that? Is it just a rating system,

or is it used to give better recommendations to users? Maybe there is someone with a completely different point of view?

[thewoodwhisperer]

I should probably clarify what I meant on this. YouTube has to get their information some way in order to supply you with recommendations. Do they base it on your thumbs up/ thumbs down or do they simply base it on the videos you actually watch and channels you subscribe to? Or is it a combination of both? I honestly have no idea and I am having trouble finding definitive info on this. Hopefully someone has an answer.

What you describe certainly seems logical, but this is a major flaw in the YouTube rating system. First off, you can't see the ratings before going into the video. The old star system used to be very handy in determining whether a video is the real deal, or just falsely-labeled crap. Now you won't know this until you go onto the page and start watching. The second issue is the fundamental difference between thumbing down a video for personal preference, or thumbing it down because its just plain bad. Wrapping these two functions into one single thumbs up and thumbs down feature just doesn't make sense and certainly doesn't do anyone any favors.

As a content producer, no matter how you slice it, a thumbs down is bad for us. And whether its done for personal preference or as a true rating, its still a ding on our content. Its even more annoying to hear that some folks are thumbing down in hopes of streamlining their recommendations. Honestly, the system for determining recommendations should be private since it doesn't really help anyone to know that someone doesn't like cat videos. But if its a bad cat video (as cat videos go), the rating should reflect that and the user should be able to rate the video publicly.

So I am not saying someone is wrong for doing what you describe Xaromir. Since YouTube isn't making it very obvious, what other conclusion can we draw? If you ask me, there should be two ratings. A 5-star system for publicly viewable ratings results, and a thumbs up and thumbs down feature for people to streamline their likes and dislikes. Combining them just doesn't make sense to me.

Anyone know exactly how it works?!?!

[Xaromir]

I've seen a good system some years ago.

You been able to favorite, like, dislike and block tags:

If you don't like cats you just added that tag to your block list or disliked it.

Ratings been clearly reserved for rating the quality of the content.

Since you talk about "youtube not making it very obvious":

I think it starts with the labels of the buttons,

it's just "like" and "dislike", those are very vague terms and can refer to many things,

like personal taste but also to quality.

If someone doesn't like cats he or she will maybe thumb it down - he dislikes it,

there is nothing really wrong with that, but it may ruin it for you since it works against

what you expect it to be.

The same person may then go about watching another video and thumb it down because it's plain and simple bad quality. It all get's mixed i guess.

Looking at it you really talk sense there and i shall stop this for now,

sometimes you need a headsup to see the obvious.

In this case that it can work on a higher level then "private".

But i guess it wouldn't be the only problem that got added to youtube this year,

and somehow - i trust them with actually having it done as i described it,

even if it really seems like a very bad idea now.

I guess we always could just ask, but writing to youtube usually is problematic,

i shall go now and ask in the google forums, i really would like to know what this actually influences.