Monday, January 23, 2012

YouTube Video Comment Breakdown

In my experience both as a video uploader and as a regular user of YouTube, comments on videos generally fall into easily distinguished categories.  I'm attempting to list them all here along with the typical reasons why they're posted and anything else related, but the list is by no means complete or statistically supported.
  • FIRST - typically multiple of these early on by different people, may or may not be deleted by video uploader
  • SECOND - fewer of these, but it does happen
  • Nth view - practically every popular video
  • 30Xth view - YouTube video view counts freeze around the 300 mark for whatever reason, so people who think they're witty post about it
  • N views and GREATER_THAN_N comments - people not understanding that one person can make multiple comments on a single page load (thanks to AJAX)
  • Under 30Xth view club - elitist faggots
  • Joke related to video about the number of dislikes that it has - people who think they're clever
  • GAMEPLAY_HINT, thumbs up so he can see - on Let's Plays
  • USELESS_GAMEPLAY_HINT - typically left by people who haven't watched the complete video yet and don't see that the player actually does what's in question later in the video
  • GAMEPLAY_HINT (left recently on a weeks/months/older old video in an LP series) - idiots
  • Thumbs up if you agree on X issue - people trying to whore thumbs up to make the "Top Comments" section
  • Watched in 240p/360p/480p/"No HD?" - impatient faggots, also might be combined with "thumbs up if you watched before HD" or something similar
  • Comments about ads - people too lazy to install ad blockers
  • This wouldn't load on my phone - smartphone users
  • What did you use to make this video? - once every few videos per Let's Play, can be asking about capture software or editing software
  • Questions about game configuration - Fairly common in any given LP series
  • Random comment that sparks a flame war - trolls
  • Heated replies to random comment that sparked the flame war - idiots
  • Now I need to find TROLL's comment - everyone else, may also be in the form of "thumbs up if you searched through the comments for TROLL's comment"
  • Quote something in the video - useless comments go!
  • Asking a question that's answered in an annotation or in the video description - unobservant idiots
  • I AM UNSUBSCRIBING BECAUSE OF X ISSUE - attention whores
  • Generic comment that basically says to everyone who reads it that the poster didn't actually watch the video - idiots
  • random link to someone else's channel - channel promotion spam
  • Meaningful comments - depends on the video, but typically a lower percentage than all the rest of the above crap

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I moderate comments because when Blogger originally implemented a spam filter it wouldn't work without comment moderation enabled. So if your comment doesn't show up right away, that would be why.