[iforgotpassword]

> We have no idea if this feature was used by more or less than 1 channel in a thousand, or these accounted for more than 1 view in a thousand.

If you really take all of YouTube into account then yes, the actual number was probably very small, considering how many cat videos, fail compilations, music videos, wedding videos etc. there are. "Last Christmas" doesn't need Cantonese subtitles but surely makes up for a lot of views.

I'm subscribed to about 100 channels with many of them making high quality videos about different topics that required research, have animations for explanation or otherwise took effort to make. These often times do have subtitles in different languages and I'd consider that pretty valuable. Throwing those in a bucket with TikTok compilations when evaluating the usage of community translations or subtitles in general is just nonsense.

[nindalf]

Clearly they need some method of prioritizing their work. HN would have you believe that every product and every feature should be supported till the end of time, regardless of whether it's used or not. In practice, in the real world, features that have few takers are removed because the maintenance burden doesn't justify the benefit.

> I'm subscribed to about 100 channels

How often have you actually relied on community generated subtitles? Note that even if you used subtitles, those could have been auto-generated.

[iforgotpassword]

> How often have you actually relied on community generated subtitles?

Almost never, since all the content I consume is in English. But several channels made posts about that upcoming change and there was quite some feedback by people depending on this (as far as I could tell, especially the Spanish speaking community).

> In practice, in the real world, features that have few takers are removed because the maintenance burden doesn't justify the benefit.

By that measure, traditional TV stations better scrap subtitles too, since the number of viewers actually relying on them is a minority, and maintaining it probably takes some effort too.

I think community generated subtitles, just like regular subtitles on TV, enable people to access information (or entertainment) they otherwise couldn't. There should be a better measure for its value than just how much effort it takes to maintain that functionality vs the number of users, otherwise there would be little reason for any kind of barrier-free technology or efforts really.

[nindalf]

So just to be clear, any project that improves accessibility can never be shut down for any reason under any circumstances? That's a pretty hard stance to take.

> By that measure, traditional TV stations better scrap subtitles too,

You made an implicit assumptions that TV subtitles and Youtube community contributed subtitles are used by the same proportion of people. That's almost certainly wrong. And remember, Youtube auto generated subtitles still exist for all videos.

Look I don't work for Google, but it pains me when I see a thread full of people shitting on them without any basis in fact.

Here's a radical idea - we trust the people working on these things to take a call on it.

[iforgotpassword]

> So just to be clear, any project that improves accessibility can never be shut down for any reason under any circumstances? That's a pretty hard stance to take.

You make it sound like this feature costs a significant amount of resources and maintenance work. It's simple brokerage between users creating subtitles and creators assigning them to their videos. And then you mention auto-generated subtitles like this is something trivial that just works. Compared to everything else that is required to run a platform like YouTube, community generated subtitles pale in comparison.

> Here's a radical idea - we trust the people working on these things to take a call on it.

Yes, because when didn't profit oriented companies only want the best for mankind? Never did the quality of a product suffer because corners were cut in order to save a few cents during production. Trusting a company like Google. A radical idea indeed.

[nindalf]

> You make it sound like this feature costs a significant amount of resources and maintenance work. It's simple brokerage

Yes. This right here. This is typical HN. You have absolutely no idea about what it takes to build or police this feature. You have no data about how much this feature is used and abused and by who. Without knowing anything you are confidently asserting that it costs very little to maintain this feature.

I'd ask you to reconsider this approach but tbh, this is the easiest way to farm upvotes on HN. So you do you.

> Yes, because when didn't profit oriented companies only want the best for mankind

I trust them a lot more than people who speak authoritatively while knowing very little.

[iforgotpassword]

> Yes. This right here. This is typical HN. You have absolutely no idea about what it takes to build or police this feature. You have no data about how much this feature is used and abused and by who.

As someone working in the field it's at least possible to make an educated guess about such things.

> Without knowing anything you are confidently asserting that it costs very little to maintain this feature.

No. You are primarily coming up with phrases like this, like "typical for HN" above to make it sound like everyone complaining is a pleb with no clue and you are far superior. You then go on to claim the reason people do this is to "farm upvotes" as a blanket invalidation, instead of contributing anything of substance.

> I trust them a lot more than people who speak authoritatively while knowing very little

I initially criticized that you suggested going by share of users when judging the usefulness of this feature, by comparing it to CC on TV and similar technologies. I tried reasoning why I believe this is an important and valuable feature that should not be removed. Only in my third comment did I mention that I can't imagine that it takes too much work to maintain this feature. But you immediately jumped at it, screaming THIS!! and continued your arrogant ramble about stupid HNers. The only one in this whole comment thread coming across as authoritative is you.

> I'd ask you to reconsider this approach [...] So you do you.

Sometimes it's best to follow your own advice.

Over and out.

[CydeWeys]

> How often have you actually relied on community generated subtitles?

I suspect the answer to this question is entirely dependent on whether you speak English. If you don't speak English (and the person you're responding to obviously does), then you're reliant on subtitles regardless of source, unless you only stick to videos in your native language.