[JumpCrisscross]

> If I want to watch well produced online content, I do not think Youtube.com

I do. Historia Civilis is presently my favourite channel. Production quality is nothing to write home about, but the quality is fantastic. Moreover, I don’t walk away feeling like I crapped away thirty minutes—I learned something.

[nindalf]

There’s two things I adore about Historia Civilis. One is the way he represents terrain and units on a battle field in battle related episodes. It might not look fancy but it gets the job done. Normally I struggle to imagine unfamiliar terrain so this helps a lot. The second is he passes the Gell-Mann test for me. There are certain sections in history I know really well because I’ve read multiple books on it and he gets those absolutely right. So when I watch an episode on an era I’m unfamiliar with, I’m confident he’s done his due diligence.

[Scriptor]

What do you mean by the "Gell Mann" test?

[sah2ed]

The quality of a news source passing a simple test of credibility by presenting an accurate account of a topic the reader is deeply familiar with.

For instance, if you are a Computer Scientist and you find yourself agreeing to a layman explanation of the halting problem while reading a NYTimes article (targeting a general audience) then the article passes the Gell-Mann test.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

[oxide]

There is a ton of quality on YouTube, some of my favorites are Redlettermedia, Baz Battles (focused on historical battles) and Lemmino, his short form documentaries are extremely well edited.

Historia Civils is one of my favorite channels as well. Excellent content.

[assblaster]

Check out PBS SpaceTime, and you'll quickly lose a day to that amazing content.

[lettergram]

I think a bigger thing, is that any of the youtube channels could just start posting to an alternative. I too enjoyed Historian Civilis, as well as Baz Battles and Kings and Generals.

In the later two cases they probably post twice as much content on patreon or other distribution channels.

I think that highlights the risk of lower scale production videos. They can be posted in more places to be "profitable", which means the distribution channels are necessarily more dynamoc / easier to come by.