Re:Seesmic: Why it's so important to just frackin' start
by tlrobinson on Monday May 26, 2008 @08:11AM
(#200147)
Most of the time video comments are useless, and worse, degrade the user's experience.
With text comments I can quickly scan the comments for interesting bits. With video comments I'm at the mercy of the commenter. I have to sit through the whole thing, watching it at whatever speed they choose to speak at rather than whatever speed I can read/scan text. It's also unsearchable.
Additionally, I think people tend to ramble more when they speak than when they're writing text that they can go back and edit.
Most of the time video just doesn't add anything to the discussion. Maybe they would be useful if the commenter needs to physically demonstrate something, or sing or recite a poem or something. But that's not the common case.
Now, if you could automatically transcribe the words from video comments and post it alongside the video (thus making watching the video optional) I wouldn't be so opposed to it. Video certainly has the potential to make the conversation a bit more personal. Sometimes it's nice to put a face to a name/comment (which could also help deter trolls)
(perhaps some sort of combination of speech recognition and crowd-sourcing could be used to transcribe video comments...)
With text comments I can quickly scan the comments for interesting bits. With video comments I'm at the mercy of the commenter. I have to sit through the whole thing, watching it at whatever speed they choose to speak at rather than whatever speed I can read/scan text. It's also unsearchable.
Additionally, I think people tend to ramble more when they speak than when they're writing text that they can go back and edit.
Most of the time video just doesn't add anything to the discussion. Maybe they would be useful if the commenter needs to physically demonstrate something, or sing or recite a poem or something. But that's not the common case.
Now, if you could automatically transcribe the words from video comments and post it alongside the video (thus making watching the video optional) I wouldn't be so opposed to it. Video certainly has the potential to make the conversation a bit more personal. Sometimes it's nice to put a face to a name/comment (which could also help deter trolls)
(perhaps some sort of combination of speech recognition and crowd-sourcing could be used to transcribe video comments...)