YouTube uploaders get moderation over comments
YouTube will revamp its comments handling with a modified Google+ comment platform, enabling YouTube uploaders to have some control over comments.
YouTube will revamp its comments handling with a modified Google+ comment platform, enabling YouTube uploaders to have some control over comments.
It's widely known that YouTube's comment section is where you'll see some of the worst behaviour on the internet. Users can, of course, help showcase the best comments and hide the worst by voting them up or down, but they still appear on the site in the order in which they were written, with a small section up the top for the highest-rated comment and comments from the uploader.
The revamped comments section — a collaboration between the Google+ and YouTube teams — will be based on a modified version of the Google+ comments engine, YouTube announced this morning on its blog.
The new comments engine will instead push to the top the most relevant comments, determined by the commenter's community engagement, upvotes by other users and the commenter's reputation — if you've been flagged for spam and abuse, you may find your comments pushed towards the bottom of the pile. Next highest in the priority list will be comments from Google+ contacts.
If you don't want the entire world to see your comments, you can also choose to make them private, allowing just your Google+ contacts to see them or even just one or two people. Comment chains will also be threaded, allowing better understanding of discussions that take place, rather than the current system of wading through to see who's said what and where.
Finally, uploaders will have greater control over who is allowed to comment and what they are allowed to say. Uploaders will be able to set a moderation queue so that they can review comments before they are posted, whitelist specific users and block comments that use certain keywords.
The new system will begin rolling out next week to select channels and should be available universally by the end of the year. If you don't like the sound of the new layout, though, you'll still be able to view comments via most recent from a drop-down menu.
"The new system tries to surface the most meaningful conversation to you," YouTube product manager Nundu Janakarim told CNET. "We're trying to shift from comments to meaningful conversations."