News | Colecandoo!

I dislike YouTube’s decision to hide dislikes

December 26, 2021 Leave a comment

The posts here on Colecandoo usually relate to prepress issues via Adobe Acrobat; or tips and techniques for page layout applications such as Adobe InDesign. On this occasion, this post relates directly to YouTube, and more specifically, a decision taken in late 2021 to disable the ability to view the amount of dislikes on any YouTube video.

Background

In November 2021, YouTube announced a change to the like/dislike feature on their platform that has been on their platform since 2010. The change does not affect the ability to like or dislike a video, but the viewer’s ability to determine the amount of dislikes on the video. Their video explaining the decision is here.

My own experience

At the time of writing this post, the way I consume the majority of video content is via YouTube on a smart television. I no longer watch free-to-air television in my own home, and now only watch free-to-air television at friends or relatives’ houses; or while at the gym. I do consume other video content such as TikTok, Netflix, Amazon Prime etc, but the lion’s share of video content I consume is via YouTube.

I will watch YouTube not only for entertainment, but for training in the form of tutorials; education in the form of documentaries and science-based channels, and news by going to the free-to-air channel’s own YouTube page, in this case, usually Australia’s ABC.

I acknowledge that YouTube as a social media platform is far from perfect, and has had its share of issues over the years, whether it be the “Adpocalypse”; the brief Google Plus account stint; or recent issues content creators have had concerning demonetization of their content. However, I do appreciate the creators who are on the platform who create worthwhile and meaningful content.

My take on YouTube’s decision

After watching YouTube’s video explaining their decision, I feel that they understand the purpose of a visible like/dislike ratio, have misunderstood how handle abuse of the feature and are focussed on dealing with the issue of downvote brigading – a phenomenon where some – or all – content on a particular YouTube channel is downvoted by many viewers, usually at the direction of an instigator. Examples of this include:

YouTube Rewind 2018;
Baby Shark Dance;
Ghostbusters 2016 Trailer;

Brigading isn’t always in the form of downvotes, and one instance in particular had encouraged subscribers to a particular YouTube channel to unsubscribe from it due directly to their perceived efforts to trademark the word “React” – an action that cost the channel over 600,000 subscribers at the time.

To quote from YouTube’s explanatory video:

“seeing the number of dislikes on a video helps us know, as viewers, if it’s a good video or not, if it’s a helpful tutorial or not, or if what a creator is saying in their video is generally agreed with or not”.
“unfortunately, research teams at Youtube have found there’s this whole other use for disliking a video” “…and it’s usually just because they don’t like the creator or what they stand for.”

It is my opinion that YouTube’s solution to combat the abuse of the like/dislike ratio is on par with cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer. In order to assist victims of brigading, they have done so at the expense of every viewer’s ability to determine the potential quality of content before it is viewed.
This is a sentiment also echoed by YouTube’s co-founder Jawed Karim, who – in the last line of the updated description of the first video he posted to the platform, wrote:

‘In business, there’s only one thing more important than “Make it better”. And that’s “Don’t f**k it up”‘.
Jawed Karim, Co-Founder of YouTube

I personally find the like/dislike ratio helpful for the following reasons:
As a viewer:

I can tell at a glance if the video accurately reflects its thumbnail and description, and wasn’t clickbait at best; or nefarious at worst;
I can determine whether the video was worth watching or not; and if I agree or disagree, leave my own feedback to help others;

As a creator:

Having a high like to dislike ratio tells viewers that my content has substance and is worth watching;
Lets me know if a video I’ve made is bad, that I need to work on – or remove – the video in order to edit and correct it.

As a YouTube content creator myself, I appreciate the feedback that I get in the comments, and have also gone to extra lengths to value-add my videos by:

making sure that my content is thoroughly researched and checked prior to publication;
providing closed captions so that the episodes can be watched without the volume, whether that is because the videos are being watched in an open-plan office without headphones; or that some viewers may find my accent difficult to understand;
adding chapter markers to my videos so that viewers who do not need the background to a video can just scrub ahead to the important parts.

All is not lost

As necessity is the mother of invention, it is – on desktop versions of YouTube at least – to return the ability to see the dislike amount by using browser extensions such as “Return Youtube Dislike” – enter this exact phrase into the search engine of your choice to find the extension for your browser.

Filed under News, Non DTP Files

10 years of Colecandoo

April 30, 2021 Leave a comment

To most people, April 30 is another day, but for me, it represents a milestone for the Colecandoo site – 10 years since the site was launched.

Unusual beginnings

While the first post Colecandoo was published on April 30 2011, the idea for the site started its life in the year 2001 while working at Mac and PC Digital as a prepress operator for the busy service bureau. The company’s web page had been amended to include a bulletin board, and one of the topics on the board was Need Help Pre-Press. Feeling somewhat frustrated with the usual errors seen by clients, I posted – under a pseudonym – an article to the board highlighting what not to do when submitting files.

Days later, I was approached by the boss about the post. While I initially denied writing the post, he knew it was me, and made the comment that there was some great information that was presented, though was unimpressed by the tone of the post.

Willing to overlook this, he suggested turning my frustration into clients’ education, and rewrite the post into a series of smaller posts providing practical advice on best practices. I obliged, and when other issues arose that I felt clients should be aware of, I would add them to the posts.

Colecandoo could have been a book

Despite leaving Mac and PC Digital to work for Gillingham Printers, I kept writing notes about issues that I thought others should be aware of, conscious that there was very little literature in the marketplace for prepress advice. As I gained knowledge with my new employer, more information was added to my collection, and I was confident that I could curate the information into a book that I felt had a potential market.

Though one observation remained true – the industry was always changing, and information that could be published in one print-run of the book would quickly be out of date. Quark’s domination gave way to the rise of InDesign and the Creative Suite, Freehand was deprecated, and PDF became the way of submitting artwork for printing.

Given this rate of change, a book was deemed the wrong media to prepare this information… but I wanted to get my advice out there, one way or another.

The plunge

Seeing the success of sites such as indesignsecrets and indiscripts, I felt that the best platform for the information I had was to create a website – not to compete with these sites, but to complement their material with what I felt was finer detail on specific information.

On 30 April 2011, the first posts were published to Colecandoo. Many of the first posts related to the handover of files, such as formats that could be accepted; missing deadlines; and even simple things such as labelling disks and CDs… oh how times have changed.

Then it happened…

In early 2013, interest in the Colecandoo site would turn my world upside-down. I was contacted by InDesignSecrets whether I would be interested in writing an article about Data Merge for InDesign Magazine. Since then I’ve written a few more pieces for the magazine, along with close to 30 articles for InDesignSecrets, and spoken at two conferences in an official capacity (as well as unofficially at CreativeWOW sessions and Ignite sessions).

Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to provide advice and assistance to dozens of businesses, including international advertising agencies, Ivy League universities, federal government agencies, and several major franchises.

I’ve also been fortunate enough to speak to Adobe Software Engineers directly, and through support of readers of the site, I’ve been able to do this several times – something I didn’t think I’d ever do when starting the site ten years ago.

Passion Project

For those that aren’t aware, maintaining this site is not my full-time job – my full-time job is as a prepress operator for Openbook Howden Print & Design in Adelaide. That said, everything that is published on the Colecandoo site itself or its social media channels such as the Colecandoo Youtube channel – is done by me. From my perspective, I see the articles on this site as my way of giving back to the community.

My sincere thanks

My thanks go out to everyone who has supported the site, whether that is as simple as visiting the site now and again to see what has been written; or liking and subscribing to the Colecandoo Youtube channel; or purchased the Data Merge to Single Records PRO script.

Finally, thank you for a fantastic ten years, and look forward to many more years to come.

Filed under News

Just not Cricut – Update

March 17, 2021 Leave a comment

UPDATE 2021-03-19: A further statement from Cricut’s CEO Ashish Arora was released on March 18, 2021, stating:

So, we’ve made the decision to reverse our previously shared plans. Right now, every member can upload an unlimited number of images and patterns to Design Space for free, and we have no intention to change this policy. This is true whether you’re a current Cricut member or are thinking about joining the Cricut family before or after December 31, 2021.
Ashish Arora (Cricut CEO)

This follows an announcement made in the previous week that uploads to Cricut’s Design Space that exceeded 20 per month would require a Cricut Access subscription. What followed on social media was an angry backlash of its user base, leading to the article that was previously posted below. I will leave the article for posterity, but in the interests of transparency, the article has since been reflected to post the March 18 statement.

There has been a development since the last article concerning Cricut’s decision to limit free uploads to its Design Space to 20 per month before requiring a Cricut Access subscription. In short, the CEO has released a statement that backs away from this decision… for now. Read the Cricut CEO’s statement on their site.

While this can be perceived as a win for Cricut users for the moment, it is worth noting the language of the second-to-last paragraph of the statement, that reads as follows:

We will continue to explore affordable ways for our future users who register machines after December 31, 2021 to allow an unlimited number of personal image and pattern uploads.
Ashish Arora (Cricut CEO)

Note the word “affordable”, and not “free”. Also, why set a date of the end of the year?

Where to from here?

Until this event, the Cricut maker community was arguably at peace and was happily using their Cricut plotting cutters. Since this event, the trust in the company has now been shaken… and the language used by the CEO in their statement does not rule out that they won’t try something like this to new users beyond next year.

The Cricut’s main competitor in this space – Silhouette – has been quick to capitalise on Cricut’s PR disaster releasing their own statement, of which one paragraph sums up their position:

There is no limit to the number of designs you are able to open and use with our software program. Silhouette has no obligation to sign up for any paid service in order to use the Silhouette cutting system or software, including your own files and designs (such as JPG, PNG, BMP, and TTF font files).
Silhouette spokesperson

The event has also spurred the community to looking into alternatives to the Cricut Design Space to interface with the plotter itself. Attempts to do this nearly a decade ago were met with legal action that was ultimately settled. But that will not necessarily stop everyone in the community from attempting to “Jailbreak” their Cricut so that the plotters can be run on other CNC software, whether a competitor or open-source.

Unfortunately, the whole event has tarnished the Cricut brand that makes arguably good hardware and consumables. Members of the Cricut community were vocal on social media, with the Reddit’s Cricut subreddit briefly pinning a note describing what action could be done – everything from cancelling Cricut Access, joining a class action lawsuit, brigading social media platforms such as Cricut’s Instagram and Facebook pages, buying competitor consumables such as vinyls and tools, etc.

I would personally like to interface the Cricut with any other software than the Cricut Design Space as described in the previous article. Releasing an API to the community so that plug-ins could be made for software such as Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Affinity Designer and Inkscape would go a long way to not only restoring faith in the Cricut brand, but make people use their Cricuts more as making designs for it would be in software that users would be familiar with already. If the Cricut Design Space is a good enough application, it should be able to stand on its own two feet without forcing its users to use it because there isn’t another application… and right now it is nowhere near that level.

Ultimately, it’s a win for existing Cricut users that has exposed the thoughts of what the company is prepared to do; and it is also a wake-up call to other software developers that software relies on happy users, and that it doesn’t take much to turn happy users into the Reddit army.

Filed under Embellishments, News, Post-Press

Advance “Australia Fair” Notice would have been nice

January 11, 2021 Leave a comment

Those of you reading this article and living outside Australia may not be familiar with Advance Australia Fair, it is Australia’s National Anthem. The anthem is relatively new – adopted in 1984 to replace the previous anthem “God Save the Queen”; and is two verses in length.

So what does this have to do with this blog about prepress and InDesign advice? Well, in this instance, that a change without prior notice can cause major issues, and in this article, I’ll explain how it did just that recently.

Young to One

The Australian National Anthem can be a polarising topic, but in this article I want to put all politics aside and look at the practical effect this change made. For readers unfamiliar with the anthem, here is some context.

In November 2020, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian suggested a one-word change to the second line of the anthem to better reflect the country’s history prior to colonisation. The line that was previously:

For we are young and free

Would now become:

For we are one and free

This was not the first time an amendment had been suggested to the anthem, and in a news cycle dominated by COVID-19 and the US Elections, it was a story that was largely out of sight. However, unlike the other suggestions, this change was not only accepted – but literally implemented overnight, with the announcement by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on New Year’s Eve 2020 that the change would be made effective on January 1, 2021.

The effect of virtually no warning

In Australia, the school year starts late January and ends early December. This means that unique materials produced for schools for the new school year are normally produced between December and January, including school diaries.

An item requested by many schools to appear in their diaries is the Australian National Anthem, as it will be sung at various events such as assemblies, sporting events, etc.

Unfortunately, the timing of the decision is frustrating. The majority of school diaries are printed between October to December, meaning any diaries that featured the previous anthem were now incorrect. It also meant that any affected diaries that were in production had to be changed, and could mean reprinting single leaves or entire sections of a diary, depending on the printing method used. It could also mean having to reprint entire diaries that had already been perfect-bound; or for coil-bound diaries, the process of unbinding, replacing the affected page and rebinding the diary with a new coil.

I understand why the change to the anthem was made, and understand that January 1 is a convenient date on a calendar as it represents a new year, with Australia Day four weeks later. However, the lack of prior notice has caught not just my own employer off-guard, but anyone who makes similar collateral for schools.

Seen this before?

When preparing diaries for clients, every effort is made to ensure the correct dates and information is used, such as public holidays and school terms. Usually, these dates are planned and gazetted well ahead of time, but there are times that they have changed unexpectedly. One example was in October 2015 when the Queensland Government changed Labour Day from October to May for the next year. This was a mild inconvenience as most diaries were still in the round-tripping stage of their production and could be updated, but there were a handful of diaries that did need sections reprinted.

Yes, a phrase can be used to explain away mistakes in a diary, such as:

while correct at the time of printing, these dates are subject to change without prior notice

but that phrase doesn’t mean much when people that have relied on a date printed in a diary, only to learn – to their own inconvenience – that the date is incorrect.

Last thoughts on the issue

I understand that this is likely to be a one-off issue, but to cause so much rework was frustrating, simply because of a decision made by the Prime Minister – made with good intentions at its core – was done with virtually no warning to implement the change.

Yes, it’s only one word that changed, and yes I’m sure customers may be forgiving of the circumstances, but if the change to the anthem was far more major, then I don’t think customers would be so forgiving.

Personally, if there were to be changes to the Australian National Anthem, how about replacing the word “Girt”? It just means surrounded or enclosed, and isn’t it even in the wrong tense for the verb “Gird”? I also feel that Australia could be better represented by songs in 80s popular culture such as Land Down Under, Great Southern Land or Sounds of Then.

Lastly, even though it breaches part of the anthem’s protocols, the anthem can be sung to the tune of “Gilligan’s Island” or “Working Class Man” by Jimmy Barnes.