New YouTube Design Will Hide Useless Comments
The comments for YouTube videos are often inane at best, and that's when they're not filled with spam messages. YouTube has decided to do something about this problem by redesigning the comments section for each video.
This redesign isn't a major overhaul of the site, but rather an extension of the efforts YouTube has made site-wide in the last few months to improve video search and user ratings.
These latest changes to the comments section will promote comments that are highly rated (recognized by other viewers as worthwhile or relevant) or that come directly from the person who uploaded the video.
This new design works to quell irrelevant comments in several ways. The highly rated comments are displayed at the top, right after any comments from the video uploader. The most recent comments are still visible, but are shown farther down the page next to a link to see all comments. And low-rated comments are pushed to the bottom of the "all comments" page.
The new measures won't stop people from writing worthless comments , but it does mean that the YouTube community can police itself better and have more worthwhile comments at the top of the discussion. Viewers won't be able to get an offensive or absurd comment to the top of the list as easily.
Allowing the comments to be rated does open up YouTube to a different kind of attack from spammers, though. A group of affiliated people with accounts can go in and all vote for a spam comment posted by one in their group, thus bumping it up to the top of the list. It remains to be seen if this will be worth spammers' time.
To view the new comments layout, viewers must have a YouTube account and go to a video in the new layout while logged in. If users don't like the new design, they can simply click on the "Old YouTube" link on the top right of the screen to change back.
