richardk wrote: ↑2019 Mar 30, 17:55
I, personally, read faster than I watch those videos. Is there anyone who prefers to watch a video "if in a hurry"?
Everyone over the age of 7 reads faster than watching videos. Videos have zero benefit for the users in situations like these and are vastly less informative and efficient, and easily a hundred times slower, than text. I could list a dozen specific ways in which a person can access and retain information faster and better from text than video - or I also could tell you to watch a 5-minute video of me explaining it instead of you reading it in 10 seconds.
(Yes of course video is helpful for showing 3-d moving things like the exact texture for beaten egg whites in cooking but even then only as a supplement to written instructions.)
I don't doubt though, that there's some sadistic user-hostile marketing psychology reason for trying to force people to watch videos.
I have to disagree with you categorically.
First, your statement that every person over age 7 can read faster than watching videos makes a grossly over-generalization that the world has 100% literacy. It most certainly does not. A great example is that, even today, almost every computer science class that deals with developing manuals / instructions urges you to write at about a 5th grade level for ease of understanding, and to incorporate lots and lots of pictures. Even better is if you can post videos of what you're trying to instruct.
Secondly, you make an additional assumption that reading disorders, such as dyslexia, do not exist at all. To anyone with even one of a number of reading disorders, a page of pure text (without supplemental media) can be quite daunting.
I read extremely quickly. I can read tens of pages of text in the time 10 seconds of video can play. But, in 10 seconds of video, when transmitted correctly, I can show you a scene that can take me several tens of pages to describe fully. Of course, it's up to the viewer to actually glean all of the information being presented, but it is no different than being presented with a ton of information in prose - as an avid reader, particularly of Fantasy and Science Fiction for 335+ years, I can tell you right now that I'll
readily skip over large swaths of text that describe, say, the way the scenery in a forest looks, when I deem it is not germane to the story-line. However, when watching a video of the same story, one that has been produced to as close an approximation of the prose, I'll
not skip the video,
even if it is not germane to the story-line.
For people who cannot read well (if at all), following a video can be the difference between being unable to do something and being able to do something. For people who have reading disabilities, a video can be the difference between being able to do something critical and not being able to do something critical.
Reading require you to be focused, to use your imagination, to pay close attention and follow steps - a video shows you exactly what steps are to be performed, when you need to click, what it looks like, when a drop-down menu expands - so much more than just the steps of what you see in the text instructions.
You don't like the videos - great. Others
depend upon them - so maybe a little less knocking them would be great.
After all, YouTube is chock full of instructional videos - and lots of people are making a lot of money and being garnered with comments like "You're a life-saver, thank you!" and "I love this video, it's perfect - it showed me exactly what to do and where I might encounter problems, without having to read a lot of text!"