alt Hacker NewsIf someone wants to learn to accomplish something tangible in the real world, there's probably no better place than YouTube, TikTok, etc.
Yes there are ads, yes there's slop, and yes it still remains a trove of practical human knowledge which would astound a 1926 American far more than Wikipedia ever did.
Compare the Wiki article with step by step PNGs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Windsor_knot
To the thousands of examples one can find on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tying+a+half+wi...
I love to read and have spent more of my life reading than probably anything else. It's my favorite way to learn. Most people do not love to read and would rather learn from another person.
I think humans will never create another Wikipedia because we're already creating something better. YouTube is just the lucky torchbearer, I think. Now that people know they can film themselves teaching or doing something they're good at, and other people will positively engage and maybe even pay them real money, there's no stopping the firehose.
In 10,000 years I imagine the 2020s will be seen less like the end and more like the beginning of human knowledge sharing.
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The wikipedia images are incredibly easy to follow for me and I like that it is easy to copy and paste the info or download a copy, search it, annotate it/modify it, etc. Just recently, there was a thread here about different ways to ties your shoes laid out similarly with images. Many people talked about easily trying them out.
Even if you are the type of learner who requires a video to learn, online video platforms, like youtube and tiktok, with ads & overlays when you pause them (and it might be hard to pause while your hands are full of silk...), with no out of the box way to download the videos, autoplay to who knows what next video, etc., are terrible vehicles for that. You can't search or annotate them. The quality varies as you stream it.
Youtube and tiktok will not be better than wikipedia because the primary goal, the raison d'etre, of these products is to make money, track your behavior, sell your data to the highest bidder and show you ads based on it. I'm not naive to the fact that Wikipedia does this, but it's obvious that wikipedia is primarily a collective effort and not a corporate product, and I have more faith in a collective group of people than a tech CEO.
Lastly, a video is a video. It is not another person. A person you can ask questions to, they can offer real time advice. Teaching someone how to tie a tie, your child, grandchild, nephew, etc., learning how to be an adult from a role model, is famously a rite of passage. If you think a video from a company trying to sell you clothes, hosted on Alphabet's servers, is a substitute for another person, especially in this age of AI generated content, I suggest you take a step back and reflect on what human connection really means.
This statement is baffling to me.
1. Wikipedia is not wikihow. It is not an aim of wikipedia to teach you how to tie a knot.
2. Youtube does not reward or otherwise provide provenance and incremental improvement.
Look at the revision page for the windsor knot: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Half-Windsor_knot...
There is no mechanism whatsoever on youtube to incrementally improve a video or understanding of a topic.