<story><title>Expertise in the Age of YouTube</title><url>https://behavioralscientist.org/expertise-in-the-age-of-youtube/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jnellis</author><text>As a finish carpenter for a number of years and having to deal with fixing homeowners attempts at doing their own remodel efforts based on them watching youtube videos, I&amp;#x27;ve come to general law regarding expertise or &amp;#x27;how to&amp;#x27; videos.  There&amp;#x27;s an inverse relationship between quality of video and accuracy of information (or maybe just usefulness of information.)&lt;p&gt;The majority of good polished videos have the least accurate or useful information. These I&amp;#x27;ve surmised are people that would rather be into video production or youtube stardom than they would being actually good at the subject they profess. Alternatively, some of the worst grainy, shaky cam videos I&amp;#x27;ve seen, usually on the jobsite, are some of the best practices, tricks of the trade or just informational rich videos you can get. These are people that are not into being youtube stars and are just part of the &amp;#x27;sharing community&amp;#x27; as it maybe was originally envisioned. But as Rumsfeld said, there&amp;#x27;s known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and when you&amp;#x27;re a homeowner watching how-to videos, its very difficult to know what you should know.... so most of them go by, instinctively, the quality of video production as their guide to what they should be doing.&lt;p&gt;Sure there are great craftsmen with great video quality and there are some really poor craftsmen with poor video quality but these are not the bulk of what&amp;#x27;s out there. What rises to the top of search offerings seems to be equally what&amp;#x27;s been marketed (poor craftsmen, high quality, &amp;quot;please like,share, and subscribe&amp;quot;) or what&amp;#x27;s been organically liked (poor quality, high craftsmanship).&lt;p&gt;For the tradesmen out there dealing with homeowners, its now sometimes a bit of an uphill battle after homeowners have done their &amp;#x27;youtube&amp;#x27; research and have determined how hard the job they&amp;#x27;ve asked you to bid is going to be.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>I have the same hard-learned rule of thumb wrt. websites in general. The cleaner looking, the more up to date with current web trends a website, the worse information on it. I&amp;#x27;ve also spotted an inverse correlation between the amount of ads on page and trustworthiness of the information on it.&lt;p&gt;I explain it to myself in a similar way: people with nice, clean, heavy websites, sprinkling ads in between the text, are content marketers. Their job isn&amp;#x27;t to educate you. It&amp;#x27;s to regurgitate whatever bullshit they can find on topic[0] in order to create SEO and social-share optimized vehicles they can then attach advertising or affiliate payload to.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;[0] - I worked alongside content marketers few jobs back. There was zero verification or care about accuracy of what was posted, and a lot of copy-pasting+rewriting of similar content from competition.</text></comment>
<story><title>Expertise in the Age of YouTube</title><url>https://behavioralscientist.org/expertise-in-the-age-of-youtube/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jnellis</author><text>As a finish carpenter for a number of years and having to deal with fixing homeowners attempts at doing their own remodel efforts based on them watching youtube videos, I&amp;#x27;ve come to general law regarding expertise or &amp;#x27;how to&amp;#x27; videos.  There&amp;#x27;s an inverse relationship between quality of video and accuracy of information (or maybe just usefulness of information.)&lt;p&gt;The majority of good polished videos have the least accurate or useful information. These I&amp;#x27;ve surmised are people that would rather be into video production or youtube stardom than they would being actually good at the subject they profess. Alternatively, some of the worst grainy, shaky cam videos I&amp;#x27;ve seen, usually on the jobsite, are some of the best practices, tricks of the trade or just informational rich videos you can get. These are people that are not into being youtube stars and are just part of the &amp;#x27;sharing community&amp;#x27; as it maybe was originally envisioned. But as Rumsfeld said, there&amp;#x27;s known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and when you&amp;#x27;re a homeowner watching how-to videos, its very difficult to know what you should know.... so most of them go by, instinctively, the quality of video production as their guide to what they should be doing.&lt;p&gt;Sure there are great craftsmen with great video quality and there are some really poor craftsmen with poor video quality but these are not the bulk of what&amp;#x27;s out there. What rises to the top of search offerings seems to be equally what&amp;#x27;s been marketed (poor craftsmen, high quality, &amp;quot;please like,share, and subscribe&amp;quot;) or what&amp;#x27;s been organically liked (poor quality, high craftsmanship).&lt;p&gt;For the tradesmen out there dealing with homeowners, its now sometimes a bit of an uphill battle after homeowners have done their &amp;#x27;youtube&amp;#x27; research and have determined how hard the job they&amp;#x27;ve asked you to bid is going to be.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ryandrake</author><text>As a die hard Jack Of All Trades handyman, I can&amp;#x27;t overstate how incredible a resource YouTube has been for me. You need to come at it with at least a small baseline of knowledge of what you&amp;#x27;re trying to attempt, good shop hygiene&amp;#x2F;safety habits, patience, a &amp;quot;measure twice, cut once&amp;quot; attitude, and so on. But once you get in the right mindset, there is just so much to learn there. I credit online resources for helping me to learn:&lt;p&gt;Basic carpentry. I&amp;#x27;ve built several pieces of furniture around my home including a pretty nice poker table (so, upholstery too). I built a 12&amp;#x27;x6&amp;#x27; shed in my back yard on a foundation that&amp;#x27;s not going to sink or slide over. Drywall and ceiling repair. Re-did a bunch of baseboard trim and only me and someone who knows what they&amp;#x27;re doing can find the mistakes. I know my limit though. I&amp;#x27;m probably not going to attempt kitchen cabinetry or replace my roof for example.&lt;p&gt;Basic plumbing. Gutted and replaced bathrooms and kitchens on multiple houses. Repaired a busted spa back to like new. Re-did sprinkler systems. Cautiously working my way up to gas lines--don&amp;#x27;t want to blow up my home.&lt;p&gt;Basic car maintenance and repair. Everything from oil changes, brake pads up to replacing intake&amp;#x2F;exhaust systems, replacing a power steering system, light bodywork.&lt;p&gt;Metal and fiberglass work. I&amp;#x27;m building a single engine kit plane in my garage. Online resources have been vital, and there&amp;#x27;s no way I&amp;#x27;d have gotten anywhere on this project without them.&lt;p&gt;You need to have a good filter. You&amp;#x27;re right that the highly polished &amp;quot;Brought To You By Tool Company!&amp;quot; productions with the generic 80s porn music soundtracks are pretty bad, and the &amp;quot;Hey Guys! Like And Subscribe&amp;quot; bros are always the worst. Find the videos without background music and with bad lighting and sound quality where the person is actually grunting and doing the work in real time along with you. They&amp;#x27;re usually the best.</text></comment>