User talk:Stephane Lo Presti/youtube videos

Youtube videos

Video guides for jumping puzzles has been very contentious, myself included. Discussion on jumping puzzles, along with external resources:

• Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Location formatting#Video guides
• Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 7#Random YouTube and other external links
• Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 7#External resources
• Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Community portal#Jumping puzzle videos

We have support for video capabilities in some way: we want jumping puzzles video guides, weapon animations, vista cinematics, special event cinematics, and so on. A GW2W youtube channel to host videos managed by wiki users is one option. The channel would host the videos and then link/embed on the wiki article. The preferred method would be to keep video content on the wiki itself, to avoid using a third-party site. I see extensions like mw:Extension:Video and mw:Extension:HTML5video, but I can't say much about them.--Relyk ~ talk > 21:47, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback Relyk, it's awesome to see that you and the community are already discussing this! I'll take a look at all the links later. Is there currently a consensus or is the discussion still ongoing? (regarding hosting videos: it feels like a big change for our backend system, that's why using a hosting service like youtube is going to have our strong preference). --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:25, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

The consensus (or at least, the action I took that hasn't been contested) is that instead of linking to individual videos for jumping puzzles and the like, we use a new {{youtube search}} template that instead takes you to Youtube search results. This eliminates any potential bias on the wiki's part and lets the user pick which video in the results to watch (and even pick a different one if their first pick was a dud).

A wiki-specific Youtube channel would be awesome, but the challenge would be recruiting and retaining active users to administer it. —Dr Ishmael 23:01, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Jumping puzzles will be an ongoing discussion. If we put jumping puzzles aside, a wiki youtube channel would be a worthwhile project for weapon animations, skill animations, and vistas. This would start off small and could be easily managed by a couple people. If that works well, we can increase the scope of the project to include and manage jumping puzzles. One goal of the project would be to encompass Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Projects/Skill animations, which hasn't received much attention by itself.--Relyk ~ talk > 23:32, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, I understand better the wiki viewpoint now. Would you say that if we do not include jumping puzzles, a consensus could be more easily reached? E.g. we could initially launch this with videos about vistas for example and take it from here (see the community reaction)? --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:29, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the issue is JPs or not, it's that there are a lot more people creating videos for JPs than for other content. People post their favorites or links to a commercial site that offers links to specific videos. The quality is much more variable than even for armor and weapon skins. Personally, unless the wiki gets into the business of vetting videos, I doubt anyone is going to be happy seeing links to specific videos. I'm not sure that this improved by linking to a sanctioned channel, whether on youtube or elsewhere.

the problem with video walkthroughs over text is that they cannot be edited by anyone -- there's no place for updates, corrections, clarifications from anyone other than the original author, who would sometimes need to reshoot the video. The issue is the same for vistas. It's less of an issue for skill and weapon animations, because those are short and, by their nature, can be standardized. 75.37.20.148 00:51, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. Something I didn't clearly explain: a solution around videos would have to include a certain level of control for the wiki community. Based on requirements (and there'll always be some), we may be able to find appropriate solutions. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:56, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

What I meant to say was that each video is the work of a single author. Even if the wiki helps control the quality of video on the channel, once it's posted, there is no way to edit it -- the community can remove it, but can't annotate, update, or otherwise improve it. I'm uncomfortable integrating videos directly into the wiki without a way to turn them into collaborative efforts.

I like Dr Ishmael's current solution, which creates a youtube search -- I can see that being narrowed to a "search the GW2 official video channel". 75.37.20.148 01:27, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

The idea of a search is really dangerous, as people can "game" (to a certain extent) search results. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 01:29, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

An imagine can say more then a thousand words right? so a youtube video will say more then 24.000 words per second. Ok this is not right and misusing languiage, but I do agree that (youtube) video's have a lot of potential as an outside source for the wiki. This goes specially for visual explainations. I think that, cause Youtube is an outside source controlled by other mechanisms as a wiki, that we should drop the public control issue of them not being editable (keep in mind it is clear that youtube isnt the wiki for bout 99.9% of the people using the wiki. So in this case and in a controlled way I say yes to video's. I think that we should invite it that people link to youtube video's. Made a guideline bout the basic standard of the video (but never too strict), and when a linked vid is contested we use a method of consensus on the discusion page where it is linked. (so only when the basic standard of what the vid should be and should not be bebroken it is allowed to be deleted. in any other cases a request for video deletion template is placed on top till a proper discussion has been held on the duscussions page and consensus has been reached.195.240.63.18 02:53, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

As dr ishmael pointed out in "Video guides", it would be a huge burden on the wiki to regulate videos.--Relyk ~ talk > 03:10, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

I think the current solution with only linking the offical youtube channel and provide a youtube search in other cases is ok. Having an wiki pug in for video... Well, I am not sure how to feel about this. We already have a fair amount of users who are uploading a picture and defending it with claws and teeth even if a better quality version is already in the wiki. I seriously don't want to see how these discussion will look like when it is about a video and not about a simple jpg.

I think having something like an offical wiki channel would be interesting. But this probably has to be monitored by probably you Stephane, and would require some dedicated users who would provide video material. I don't think that such a channel could work on everybody can upload something basis, we probably need an extra wiki group that this can work. - Yandere 03:31, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

The result of a YouTube search is not an option as results can be manipulated (we don't want to link to a video that has nothing to do with GW2 solely based on its title). I'm not surprised that this is not a popular idea, because it does have its challenges, but I'm of the opinion that it'd add value to the articles. Can't we get a first consensus for example on creating a YouTube channel managed by me and a couple of volunteers here for Vistas videos? This seems like a safe version of that idea, given that vistas are "video content" in GW2. Bear in mind that I do realize that this is a topic with a set of challenges, and I'm not asking for policies to be changed just for that. If there's no consensus on this idea, it'll be canned (and I'll sincerely be sad that we missed an opportunity to benefit from the abilities of some contributors). I've created a subpage for this topic and will be copying the content here. Please continue the discussion over there, thanks ^^ --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:57, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

To be honest, there are actually loads of really awesome videos on vistas and jumping puzzles on YouTube. I don’t really see the benefit of another group adding another set of videos to the already available collection. I especially wouldn’t like to see wiki contributors invest time for all that video recording and editing, when they could instead spend this valuable time on the wiki itself instead, for example writing down instructions on how to get to a vista, or finish a jumping puzzle.

While I can understand where this comes from, to have all available content coming from the wiki community, I don’t believe videos are wiki material at all. Videos cannot be quickly modified by anyone, as a wiki promises, especially if the content is hosted on an external platform and can only be accessed by a small selection of people (who would need to share a password btw?!). Videos are really not in the spirit of a wiki, at least with the current technology possibilities.

Also by doing that, we would again favor some video content over other’s, which is why the whole YouTube search started. Even if that favoring goes over a group that are from the wiki, it is not the same as the wiki, as the (write) access to it is not given to the whole Guild Wars 2 community—which the wiki is open to. poke | talk 23:43, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

What are the odds of someone deciding to game search results for GW2 vistas and jumping puzzles, and then successfully doing so? Aren't there some decent safeguards against that? There's probably already cases of something not quite GW2 related coming within the first 10 results in thousands of various search queries that include the term "GW2", non-maliciously. Is that a big deal? Is there really really going to be a huge increase in people trying to maliciously game search results because the wiki links to searches, versus the hundreds of times people are advised to search for vista/jumping puzzle videos every day in guild chats and forums when someone asks for help with them? Manifold 00:34, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Jumping puzzles are the only contentious type of video to link to. I don't mind linking videos directly for everything else as there is no issue for links to youtube videos. We can either leave the status quo for jumping puzzles with the youtube search or leave a note telling people to look up YouTube video guides to aid with the walkthrough.--Relyk ~ talk > 00:57, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

(reset ind) The point is that linking videos directly had the problem that everybody and their mom wanted to add a video or replace it with a new one, because the new version was better (which means it was from the editor which suggested the change). So yeah if we link stuff directly this should be an offical source. No third party stuff, no whatever, a single channel where all this stuff is uploaded or perhaps reuploaded if one of the youtube walkthrough guys wants to put his video in the channel.

At the moment I don't even think that any youtube link should be provided for jumping puzzle. A simply message with please search the interwebs aka use google or youtube search for the stuff you need is more than enough.

Which brings us to the last thing, anivation cinematography capature etc. I am not into this stuff, but when someone wants to do this he sould probably have a single channel where these things get uploaded. - Yandere 01:30, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) was there a consensuses about this? I there has been an IP that went and added youtube videos to the major cites.- Zesbeer 10:15, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

The old consensus is still not to add direct links to videos. This topic is also about a specific YT channel and that does not exist yet. poke | talk 14:00, 20 February 2013 (UTC)