I find it somewhat ironic that you say this in a comment! Why not read the damned blog post and be left alone?

I think the popularity of comments on sites like this one demonstrates that comments done right can add a significant amount of value in many cases; not sure that mainstream videos where the commenters are basically sampled from the entire population are such a case, but comments can be useful on videos aimed at a narrower audience.

> I find it somewhat ironic that you say this in a comment! Why not read the damned blog post and be left alone?

Because he said Youtube, not comments in general. It's perfectly non-ironic to expect different things from different sites.

>Has anyone ever really said, "Man, my whole day was made better by that comment on YouTube! I'm really glad I could be part of that!"?

Yes, me, tons of times. Comments of YouTube have made me feel connect to a common human "soul" with people all around the globe, unlike any other medium.

Nothing like a 18 year old American, a 30 year old French and a 70 year old Asian praising the same Louis Armstrong video for example. Or people enjoying some cat doing feline stuff.

Even the feuds are enlightening, seeing that people over country X and Y, fight between them for similar issues to the ones your country has with country Z.

I've also seen tons of humor there.

I have some technical videos with a few hundred views, and I am pleased when someone comments to say that the content was useful to them, or to ask a clarifying question.

Hypothesis: comments are more civil and useful in the long tail...

There are lots of situations where youtube comments would actually improve the quality of the content. Educational videos, for example, are often clarified and elaborated on in the comments.

Unfortunately, trolling comments often ruin this opportunity. If I wanted to show my nephew a video from khan academy or a news report, I would probably have to turn off or hide the comments before showing him the video.

You're right, nobody has ever said that. I hope that's the point. I hope the end goal is that people will say that occasionally.

I never even glance at the comments on certain sites (e.g. YouTube, Yahoo Sports) because I know they are going to be awful. I do read comments on other sites (e.g. Deadspin, AVClub) because they often add to the story and are also often hilarious.

It really depends on what you're on YouTube to do. For me YouTube is my #1 Social Network and has been for many years. Comments are a big part of every video, a place for you to interact with those who watch your content. A place to get ideas, feedback, and just add a personal touch thanking people for engaging with something that took you a lot of work to produce or something you really wanted to share.

That being said I absolutely can't stand google's continued attempt to force people to link google plus to youtube and am iffy on what this new change will do, but I am all for making the comment section more useful especially since they just took away our ability to respond to a video with a video (video responses).

Why is the possibility that Google saw Plus as a way to improve youtube, maps, search, so egregious?

I won't be linking my actual name with my youtube or even my google+ account, but, unless google somehow tries to force me, I would be glad to see most users coerced into doing so.

Which videos do you watch? Where is this mecca of decent comments on YouTube? 99.9% of the comments I read are awful.

I watch a lot of vlogs as well as skits, music, short films and some gaming videos as well. I make vlogs myself mostly and between my several channels have over a quarter million subscribers.

So basically you're obliged to commend the quality of your comments? :P

Heh, I kid I kid. I'm glad you've got a good community there.

Oh wow, your edit really corresponds to an illustration by Matthew Inman: https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/CNcAzVKo2RH

There are lots of trolls, but I always enjoy the occasionally hilariously clever comment or interesting information/opinions people can offer on more technical subjects.

Okay, here you go: http://kidsfriend.ly. But I built it for kids, no like/rating/comments/related/recommendation.

Sample playlist: http://www.kidsfriend.ly/playlists/6FD474E496A111E2969E12313...

It would be interesting to see what would happen to YouTube if the comments were removed from video / channel pages for a week or a month.

I don't see how that would keep people from visiting the site or watching videos (and of course, ads).

Try using the Feather experiment, it gets rid of a lot of things including comments, iirc: http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta

It wouldn't keep people from the site, but they would spend less time on it. Not sure if that would decrease their ad views, or increase views because users aren't wasting time reading comments.

Depending on the video there are very good discussions in the comments. Youtube is not made of cats.

You might like CommentSnob, you can use it to hide bad (or all) comments on YT, etc.