Comment 15 for bug 237995

"Most of the comments fell into one of four categories:-

* Spam (which is less of an issue in newer versions of Drupal)
* 'Thanks for this video'
* Technical support questions which don't belong on a screencast site
* Questions regarding when new videos would be available :S"

We shouldn't censor ourselves on account of spambots. What problem is there with viewers showing appreciation? A technical support disclaimer can direct people to the forums. If we syndicate publicly created videos, there would be newly created content on a regular basis. Syndication would not rule out the production of quality videos, it would just broaden the content base.

The more we let people participate, the more they will participate.

"I didn't want to have a load of links to external sites and videos for numerous reasons:-

* We don't control the content so can't control the quality of those submitted videos
* Linking to youtube (for example) videos doesn't give the user the ability to download the videos using RSS (easily)
* Videos are not downloadable from youtube in a format which Ubuntu can play out of the box
* We are unable to put subtitles (and thus translated subtitles) on 3rd party youtube video sites."

The desire for control might be an underlying issue as to why the screencasts site has not taken off. The reason that the Ubuntu forums and wiki are so dang great is that they are egalitarian/community controlled. I realize that Drupal is a bit tricky to administrate, but roles can be created for varying levels of access/control right?

I'm not advocating primarily for youtube. I don't much care for youtube. I had troubles playing youtube videos as well. I am glad that you are advocating for Archive.org and Blip.tv (and not dismissing other platforms), as those platforms are doing some great things. However, lets not limit the community's options based on the lack of specific features, people are what we need.

The more people we have participating, the less the burden will fall on one person.

"Before I uploaded anything to blip.tv the amount of work that I put in to make _one_ screencast available was tremendous. From the recording and editing to the video encoding and uploading multiple versions, and page creation."

Different workflows will have different time requirements and will produce varying quality, right? Here is a screencast of a guy explaining GTKRecord My Desktop:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1849528422672935564&ei=EyyNSqTBCp6yqgKMkPyACA&q=gtk+record+my+desktop&client=firefox-a

"I have spent a little time updating some of the screencast pages on the wiki to tidy them up and have them make more sense. I still have many more pages to update/revise, and have also been tinkering with the drupal site behind the scenes."

Thank you very much for your time and effort on this project Alan! This is an important initiative for community end-user training and knowledge dissemination. I am glad that we have a dedicated and experienced webmaster.

Also, great work on the look and feel of the site EmmaJane. Your design is clean and user-friendly, and brown :-)