Video's Forum please

Look I know I might have allready said it at the preview site. But people just come here more often, and it's now the perfect example of why this is needed.

This week the homepage of the current channel9 has been flooded by video's. Lots of them are really good and spark conversations. I notice how Charles (or somebody on the C9 team) makes sure the videos that are featured at the top get swapped now and then. But still. A video might nog be a week old and only show up below the fold, or on the second page. Yet that video has some comments but nobody ever returns to them because it is to hard. A textual list of all video's indicating if you have read all comments on that video or not (like a thread) would really spark conversation (alongside the video).

I would love to see them become a reality (and I guess you would to). Video's Forum:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site1133/feedback/details/580755/read-unread-status-for-video-comments

Lots of people who are ON the video's check the comments on that video and react to them. Less people check tho forum to see if there might have been made a thread about there video. It's also easier to see witch video's get traction/reaction.

This is a lot of work for the Rev9 team, because as I understand the architecture for comments on video's is completly different than for Forums in Rev9. So we need the votes.

Example given of a 'forgotten thread' might be:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/Internet-Explorer-9-Platform-Preview-4-The-IE9-Rocks-HTML5-Audio-Support/
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LauraFoy/Windows-Phone-7-Apps--Tools/#Page=2
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/jeffsand/Preview-The-New-Channel-9/

Am I the only one ?

Charles said:

Good feedback. Thanks for publishing your suggestion to our Connect site.

 

In fact, I am the one who manages the C9 homepage, so this feedback is especially useful to me. To be clear, are you saying that the homepage content river is moving too fast? The amount of content produced for C9 is at an all time high. It's my responsibility to manage it effectively. Can you elaborate a bit more on why you think a Videos forum will solve the problems you have identified? Sorry, it's not clear.

 

C

Well, the 'content river' as you call it seems to indeed be high the last 2 weeks or so. A lot of new content (this is good!) compaired to some other timeframes where new content does not seem to be arriving quickly (less good). There where times Ping was still featured at the top of the page when 'This week on Channel 9' arrived for example. That gives an impression not much new is going on (although there still might be screencasts published by indipented sources, they rarely get onto the main page)
So about your managment of the homepage, it's good. You can see somebody is looking out for it and makes sure every video gets its time on the 'prime spot' at the top. (this might be less of a problem in the Rev9 with the rotation video's = good!).

With Video Forum I want to adres the problem of multiple discussions about the same thing on different places. Often people start a thread in the CoffeeHouse about a video that was posted. Why do they do this? The video has a 'comments' section, but that section is more like a 'post your comment and never return' place right now. It never sparks a discussion. Comments on video's almost never go above 2 pages. That is because commenters don't return to videos and that is a problem.

Some person interviewed in a video might check te thread to know if there were some reactions/questions and give there answers/views to the problem. But that person might do it a week after the video is posted (we know you all have a job to do at Microsoft too). So then that comment is never seen by anyone and i often the last comment in the thread. The also is no way for people being interviewd to know if there has been some new reaction to the video (AFAIK) , other then bookmarking the video page and checking it now and then.

A textual list like the coffeehouse with the titles for all the video's , the number of comments, and a read/unread status would be a place I visit often. The video titles should be clickable and take you to the video page (just like the titles do on the fornt page now). That way it does not mather that the last C9 Lecture about the STL in C++ was posted 4 weeks back. If I post a new comment to it you would know because new comments in thread bubbel up to the top of a forum (like in the cofeehouse).

A demo:  A posted a comment on a video from the end of July mentioning this thread. To spark conversation about this video. Can you find it? I assure you the video is still relevant. The thread is also a prime example of 'people not comming back' , somebody asked a question , got an answer, but probably never read it (at least no response to the answer was given). This is also what discourages people from answering questions.

ryanb said:

CKurt said:

*snip*

I don't know that I would say the content river is flowing too fast.  Moving fast is just a function of how much new content is coming in, and fast means that we are getting a lot of new material.  Can't complain about that.  I think the issue is more about how to find the material that you (individually) are most interested in seeing and following.  The new browse page is a big step in the right direction.  Having a user-configurable way of filtering or customizing the content to the specific shows/topics/favorite episodes/tracked episodes would be a huge improvement too in finding content.  Those are ideas that have been discussed a lot here in recent days.  (And I would greatly prefer being able to make the choices directly over counting on the proposed intelligent system.  A smart Amazon style recommendation system is fine, but needs to be based on a lot more than just star ratings if it is going to produce useful results.)

 

In general though, I will agree that having some sort of notification of new posts to video comments would be useful and worth adding.  The question is where and how to best do that.  Having a separate text list of videos doesn't seem like the way to do it.  One possibility would be to just have videos with new comments bubble up in the list just like threads in the forums.  That would keep them near the top, and thus easier to find (with some indicator to show new posts).  That would probably best be a different "view filter" in the browser though, since taking away the normal chronological ordering wouldn't be good either.  It would just take an "active comments" tab on the video browse page.  A system for notifications on 'watch listed' videos as well as forum threads would be useful too, as with most forum software. 

Well for notifications on comments we also need a kind of read/unread status. Even if it is only for the backend. It would indeed not be good to take away chronological order of content on the main page. A filter to only view 'recent commented' ones could help here. But I think a Coffeehouse like view of all the video's (no thumbnails, just title, number of comments, time last comment, read/unread indication) would be a good way to do it. Video's that would generete a lot of comments would then bubble to the top (just like the would in the 'recent commented' filter on the main page). A text view however alows for more content to bi visible on one page (more video threads).

@Charles: Did my second post my the idea and problem any clearer ?

CKurt has a great point here - I also noticed the same over the last few years. Videos (and the thread created with them) are all isolated conversations because it's hard to understand whether somebody replied, etc. (an overview is missing) - whereas the Coffeehouse is more like one big conversation due to the overview that allows you to fast understand what has changed since your last visit.

exoteric said:

See what you mean. This is a good suggestion, I believe I previously suggested a video forum as well, if not with the read/unread comments thing. Voted up.

 

One could consider forum threads and video threads to be distinct but doing so denies a lot of debate on the video threads. Some sites also automatically create a thread that links back to an article. Not quite as good but a step in the middle.

A great first step. Making the video's apear in the format of a forum should no be that hard.

You copy the code to create the main page of the Coffeehouse, change the query to select titles/lastcomment/ number of comments/ permalink and change the field names.

That would make the textuel list, but then adding read/unread might be the tough part. Atleast you then have the Video's forum. (Each title linking to the comment page that now allready exists).

Duncanma said:

CKurt said:

*snip*

I think we should focus on the problem here, not start describing the code of a solution.

 

"That is because commenters don't return to videos and that is a problem."

 

I think a great first step, because it is someone people have wanted for quite some time would be to add email notification when someone replies in a discussion that you participated in (on both videos and forum threads). For people interested in the video who haven't commented, we just let them sign up to be notified about that particular discussion as well.

 

We could allow you to view your notifications as a stream of news on the site as well as via email, which would give you a great place to check up on conversations you are interested in.

We could allow you to view your notifications as a stream of news on the site as well as via email, which would give you a great place to check up on conversations you are interested in.

For me that would be an essential part of the notification system. I like to keep my email clean and get the news about what is happend when I go to the site. (eg: Facebook , Linkedin,...)