Hi! Glad to see you!

I understand that reducing the worthless drive-by dismissals based on unfamiliar formatting was the objective of the change. My complaint is that there are a lot of comments like mine, which I hope is not worthless and which is based on reading the entire transcript as well as watching parts of the talk, which will never be made because you can't write those comments if you just watch the video. Also, watching the video takes a long time, so many people won't bother.

I would have liked to read those comments, even if there were worthless drive-by dismissals underneath them. I think it's bad to eliminate thoughtful discussion because the conditions necessary to produce it also cause discomfort in our less thoughtful brethren.

Can you elaborate on why some comments won't be made if people watched the video rather than read the transcript?

I certainly agree with your second point that some people prefer reading transcripts to watching videos. I used to be one of them until a year ago!

You can't scroll back and forth through the video to compare different points where he's talking about related themes, you can't text-search to find where or whether he mentioned a particular theme, and when you're reading the transcript, it pauses automatically when you stop to think, so thinking is the default. With the video pausing requires effort, so the default is to not think.

There are things that work better in some sort of video. GUI demos, mechanical movements, some kinds of data visualizations, and facial expressions, for example.

Thank you!

Now that you mention it, I tend to pause and rewind a lot. But I likely do miss connections that are more than a few minutes apart.

I would imagine it's because the transcript contains strictly more information than the video?

Each contain information that the other lacks.