1. There are numerous userscripts that let you select a default video quality. I use YousableTubeFix, which also adds video download links and a number of fine-grained interface tweaks (heck, you can even remove the comment section completely, mooting point 4!)

3. Agreed.

4. The anarchy of the comment sections are part of the fun of Youtube to me. I rarely read even a page of comments, but the top voted ones manage to make me chuckle surprisingly often. Filtering worthless comments like "FIRST" could improve things a bit, but then you're on the slippery slope towards Google's definition of worthless not matching your own. I don't mind a cesspool with a few hidden gems, because I never even see the cesspool in the first place.

The only thing that really bugs me about Youtube is Google trying to integrate Google+ and real names with it. The parts of Youtube I'm interested in are anonymous or pseudonymous and filled with (not necessarily "bad") stuff that people don't want tied to their real name. Stop bugging us to attach our real names to everything, Google, you're missing the appeal of your own service.

ya that real names thing is starting to piss me off. i get prompted for that way too often and it's way too hard to make that prompt go away. it seems designed to make you end up misclicking at some point trying to close it. and once you do every random possibly inappropriate video you ever liked or commented on will be tied to your real name? seriously?

> Google and YouTube are full of smart people. Some kind of "poor comment quality" filter should be easy to implement.

This touches on something I actually feel deserves a second look, if only from an academic or sociological perspective.

I have never quite understood why Youtube appears to be the single largest (or, at least most prominent) internet cesspool. Comments there are routinely among the most vile I've seen anywhere, and I've never been able to rationalize a suitable explanation.

Pretty much everyone who uses the internet, uses YouTube. But the ones who comment on YouTube represent the race to the bottom in terms of quality. The vast majority of internet users watch YouTube videos, but only the vile juvenile trolls and assholes bother to comment.

Install this and your experience will improve: http://www.tannr.com/herp-derp-youtube-comments/

My guess is that it has huge visibility and no moderation. There's almost no chance of your comment being deleted, no matter how vile, stupid or offensive it is, and it's in one of the biggest places of the internet. It's like doing graffiti on the White House, but you can get away with it.

Its like doing Grafitti in New York with 20 Cops and 3 sanitation workers taking care of the entire city. Of course you can get away with it, and there are plenty of people getting away with it.

Mean correlates with stupid. More stupid people watch TV than read. YouTube is TV.

It's a little bit more complicated than that. Every smart person I know browses Youtube. Youtube isn't like a TV network; most videos are only a few minutes long, so it's not inherently a timesuck the way that watching an hour long drama is.

The difference is that because Youtube has no moderation in its comments, smart people look at the comments and immediately decide that it's not worth their time. So, the only people who comment are the idiots who just like to see their words on the Internet.

Unfortunately, everyone browses YouTube. And there's a lot more not-smart people than smart people. (And teenagers have a lot more time on their hands than adults.)

I'd argue the root problem of YouTube comments is that they're not associated with any real community at all, in most cases. There's almost no benefit to posting a good comment, and no penalty to posting a stupid one.

Imagine how stupid the comments would be if everyone watching a TV show with you could post to the same wall.

This is definitely true. The smart people will be on a community like this, Reddit, or forum, post a link to the video, and discuss it within their own community. Only the idiots will post comments directly onto the video's page.

Really? Why in the world would they do that? Effectively zero of the smart people I know browse YouTube.

Most of my programmer friends listen to podcasts, but I honestly have no idea what smart people do with YouTube.

Some of the smart people I've heard of are on YouTube.

(http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/02/provos/)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyUkYJeZtW4)

Wow. That article was awesome. The video was cool, too, although it didn't hold my interest like the story did.

The thing is, I don't doubt there's lots of interesting content on YouTube. I just can't conceive of browsing through it for fun. There's too much good stuff to read.

It's still a decently authoritative source for music.

Right, but every dumb person you know browses YouTube as well, and comment quality is pulled down by dumb people more easily than it can be pulled up by smart people.

Anything that requires actual reading already has a barrier to entry to the dumbest of the dumb.

I've found grim proof of this by observing people at shared computers in public libraries. It's not simply people watching a video now and then, but dozens of people spending their entire allotment of time watching YouTube as they would watch TV, amidst a sea of free books.

Proof of what? The post you're commenting on makes two claims: (1) mean correlates with stupid, (2) more stupid people watch TV than read. How does your library experience prove either of those things? I guess you meant (2), but how do you know how smart library users that watch videos on computers are and how smart library users that read are? Did you just apply some prejudice you have? I wouldn't regard that as proof. And as a person that greatly enjoys reading, watching TV and watching videos on YouTube, I'll probably be offended by any such prejudice. ;)

Quality of the videos, and like begets like?

> Default to 240: I want to be able to always watch videos in the worst resolution possible. I want the lightest bandwidth possible. I'd sometimes be happy with just the audio. It seems that I can't default to 240, no matter what I click.

Strange you mention this, because just minutes ago I changed a video to 240, and it prompted me to save my preference (the text was headlined with "Slow Connection?"). Maybe a new feature?

I have that option enabled, and it just defaults to 360p. As far as I can tell, that option just makes it not increase the resolution when you click full screen.

Go back later and see if it sticks :)

Maybe I don't go to the right videos, but I don't find Youtube comments that bad. They are mostly useless, sometimes a bit too brutally honest, but nothing that offensive. I find comments on mainstream news sites, and on sites using Disqus (for some reason I can't explain) much worse.

I have a lot of problems with their interface, starting from the latest useless homepage, but I've mostly given up. Nowadays, I stay logged out and get updates from my subscriptions by email (which is also uselessly tricky to activate).

Personally I'd hate a default to 240 feature. I don't care about bandwidth, I'm tired of clicking the HQ button.

I think the point is more "set a preferred default resolution" than "default to least BW".

I increasingly use youtube-dl for YouTube, Vimeo, and a few other sites. I prefer watching videos using something other than my browser, with uniform controls, the ability to speed up (especially talking head crap) and slow down (um, explosions and crashes) video. Preferences and commandline options can be used to specify preferred resolution, though HD can be really nice.

You can always try using this Chrome extension Auto HD For YouTube https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/empty-title/koiaok...

I think it was meant as a setting, which could live along side a default to HD setting.