Drunk!Bobby Presents: G+ Comments (by @themefund)

[@TwitchySirenixie]

Made it to the end of the video. Good points all around, Bobby. Editable comments is one of my favorite new features. I hated being that girl that had to delete a comment and repost it (knowing that you'd possibly get an e-mail) because of one tiny mistake. I can foresee that a comment will be made (typo, insulting, etc.), then people will respond to said comment and then the OP will edit it differently in a sad attempt to make everybody else look like fools. Anywho, I'm still learning how best to use youtube/G+ so thanks for the video. I've never had a problem with G+ so I'm neither a hater nor a fangirl, meaning I don't get giant-squid-of-anger-ish about changes, but, I also recognize things that youtube/G+ did wrong. Much like you in this video. Hopefully they will learn from their mistakes and tweak things that need to be tweaked. In a big change like this people were bound to get upset. I was annoyed when they got rid of video responses but trusted they at least had something else in store for us. For me, back when they were asking to connect accounts I had found that none of my friends really used G+ so for my personal stuff the integration was a non-issue. I stuck with using google for my e-mail and not for other social activity. I could see getting into the G+ community now with my youtube personality especially if I want to grow my channel. It would also help to make more videos. :P

[@Pietcold]

I saw the whole video, and you made allot of good points about that it's new and how you tube should have prepared us for this change, another thing is if KZbin had done the change like you suggested in the video, Let us joing over the period of 6 moths that would have technically been the beta testing stage.

[@ZottePark]

I watched this til the end, and I must say, Bobby, that I will give Google + another go.

[@KerryHallPhD]

I made it to the end :D I like G+, but I also like that I can uncheck the "Also share on Google+" on my comments, since my feed is pretty sparse and I don't like sharing everything that I want to comment there.

[@RobertJones]

I'm still looking for a chrome plugin that would allow me to have that box unchecked by default.

[@lightanddarklove]

I made it to the end! I was listening to this as I would a podcast at work, and I agree with a lot of what you have to say but I have to get back to work so I'll edit this comment later. Although the transition from KZbin to G+ was quite shoddy some of its improvements are quite nice. I do agree that there is still some work to be done to make it better. Since I am taking advantage of the edit feature, its obviously a plus (did you realize you were making that pun when you said it? I picked up on it every time). The only issue is if someone makes a nasty comment they can just redact that section of their comment and unless somebody screen-capped it there isn't any way to prove that it exists (and screen caps are sometimes faked; you've probably seen the fake twitter screen-caps of obama and other celebs). One thing I really like about the change is I actually know when people I'm commenting on actually respond! The inbox was another feature that was broken for quite a long time, and so few people mention it (only to say something to the effect of "youtube comments suck, I don't always see new comments, here's an email address because I actually respond to those"). The inbox is pretty easy to use and its nice you can see the content on the page in case you commented a lot on that person's videos and forgot the topic of one (its almost as good as deviantart's inbox, if you've ever been on there). The first time I saw the Romeo and Juliet thing I thought it was funny (honestly I just thought they were testing the limits of the system), but I'm sure that gets old fast. One thing they could do to reduce spam (of large blocks of text anyway) is if a person goes over lets say 20 or so lines of text on multiple comments they get a captcha code. They did it before and it was annoying but this would only be for long comments. Its not like all of our comments will be 20 pages long, so it likely would affect even community minded users. P4A will be easier now though because captchas aren't on all comments (so we can blow up good videos more easily). The link thing will probably be sorted out soon, I just hope that that's not the reason the comments were turned off on educational content, because people were spamming them. It would be nice if there were in-house link shorteners, but maybe that's something they're working on. I'd like to think that if I comment on someone regularly they'd be willing to check out my video response (attached to a comment), but I'm afraid that won't be the case for a while. I'll wait until the spammers calm down, and see how it goes. One thing Hank Green mentioned in his video is how Top Comments should have an option to be not the default. I agree and think that Google should give us more options, period. I miss ways to customize your channel structure (having a certain tab be the primary one, for example). Imagine if they let us make custom tabs! Ah well, I guess I'll just go to tumblr for customizable features... Everything else you said I pretty much agree with, but I'll be back if I think of anything else.

[@RobertJones]

You're the second person to mention that this was like a podcast. I should really get that recording equipment together and start the braincrack podcast I've had in my head for so long.

[@lightanddarklove]

I would totally be into you doing podcasts. You have a soothing voice and you are often insightful.

[@RobertJones]

A few things I forgot to mention as negatives: The notification system is just a firehose of information. I used to have all of my comments, replies, subscriptions, and etc. emailed to me and then filtered into their own little sections in Gmail so I would know right away what kind of notification I was getting. With the new system you get notifications for +1s, comments, replies to your comments, video shares, messages, and probably other things (event invites?) ALL inside the little bell. There is no way to section it out or organize it in any logical way. This is a huge negative for users with a lot of interactions. That also coincides with my second forgotten "negative" feature: I now have to manually switch to an account on KZbin/G+ to get comment notifications. Prior to this change I could get an email notification for *any* account on KZbin so long as I had access to the email associated with it. I could just forward the KZbin emails to my main Gmail account and filter them into their own little box. One sign-in and I'd see it all. Now I have to switch to the accounts. Not a huge negative, but if you manage a ton of accounts this could get tedious.

[@WeLoveKnowledgeVideos]

Are you sure you can't set up your notifications the same way you used to under the new system? I get emails for replies, new subs (well, those few who don't have their subs set to private), event invites and for new comments on my videos. So pretty much everything except +1ses. And then on top of that I get that nice bell with all interactions in one place and the feeling of being way more important than I actually am. lol

[@RobertJones]

JustSomeGermanDude Right, but I only want them in one place at a time, When I had the comments emailed to me they would also continue to show up in the bell, and there wasn't enough unique identifying information in the email to properly set up email filters either (I get something between 100-400 emails per day when I'm actively posting new videos) I just wish there was a sorting feature inside the bell, group all the +1s together, or the comments together, or circle notifications, etc. then I could just mark whole groups as read all at once without needing to read them individually to ensure I don't mark something read that needed attention.

[@aquatius5]

What I just wish was that you could connect several KZbin accounts to one Google+ page.

[@DuckyGames]

I've been on g+ for a while, i wasnt too excited to merge g+ and Yt together because of my name.. but then i used a different nickname instead and now im totally fine with it! I liked g+ for a while now and me and my friends use it to vid chat instead of skype because we can watch Yt videos together.

[@DuckyGames]

oh! also, they keep telling me to get a custom url. but it requires a phone number, I dont have a phone! AGH and facebook keeps doing it too.. Sometimes people dont have phones!

[@RobertJones]

Ducky Games Sign up for Google Voice. I ddin't have a phone for 2 years but had a phone number where I could verify stuff.

[@Killadog1980]

also can you link to your blog post at 32:30?

[@RobertJones]

There are several posts that got some attention during this time, I'll try to link them all. First there was a comment/G+ Post I left on the ***** blog post officially announcing the new system: plus.google.com/+RobertJones/posts/jVKStXaC4ax This got about 60 reply comments. Then there was a comment I made on a video about the new system and how the user hated it. At the time I was arguing that the linking/signup process was easy, which for *seom* people it is, but power-users of KZbin do not have an easy time whatsoever and my opinion has since changed on this particular issue. This post got ~50 replies, mostly people calling me a "shill for Google" plus.google.com/+RobertJones/posts/CGA2Ug3JXv2 And then there is this post which is the one that made me wish for a way to sort/group the notifications together somehow. It was made on the ***** blog post when they announced the end of Video Responses, and got the most +1s I've ever gotten on a post (still get a few per day). This is the one I point to when I'm accused of being a "google shill" or on the payroll for KZbin to talk them up, since it was a rather scathing comment on their changes: plus.google.com/+RobertJones/posts/HA2VEmexKYi

[@Killadog1980]

i made it to the end, am i thought this video was going to be a waste of time! it wasnt!

[@RobertJones]

Auris2 I'm glad it was useful, thanks for watching!

[@Killadog1980]

can you give a link to dan brown's channel?

[@RobertJones]

Sure: ***** lives on the KZbin channel PogoBat: kzbin.info He lives in other places as well (NYC for one) and some other music channels on KZbin (which I can't remember at the moment) but his discussion vlogs live on the pogobat channel.

[@DavesChaoticBrain]

So, you comment on not liking Facebook at all...but you don't say why! I have to admit to getting very frustrated with people always complaining about how horrible Facebook is but being unable to say why! If you could give your reasons, that would be awesome!

[@RobertJones]

I actually made a video about it ages ago, and it still holds true: New Facebook is Killing Discussions

[@WeLoveKnowledgeVideos]

Such a long video and the biggest point I can disagree on is using the term drunk after merely 3 and a half beers. Disappoint! Except: you make it sound like you can only + mention people who are in your circles.

[@RobertJones]

I'm a small person, plus each of these beers was 8% ABV, plus I hadn't really had much to eat today.