The Time I Couldn’t Delete Comments on My Own YouTube Channel and What That Could Mean for a Community
I used to host an online show called Soda Tasting. Though I had a nice website and I interacted with people on various platforms, by and large, my interaction with people occurred on YouTube. And the reputation that YouTube comments have is generally deserving.
That said, the Soda Tasting community of viewers was a utopia and it was that way for two reasons. 1. There are great, cool people out there and some of them were attracted to the show. 2. When someone showed up who was neither great, nor cool, I would delete their comments and sometimes ban them.
Even though I have stopped hosting the show, I still allow comments on YouTube (for the moment) and I still monitor them to ensure that they are respectful, in line with the personality and atmosphere of the show. As always, anything rude or disrespectful is removed.
Until a few nights ago. I saw that there was a new comment and it was the typical trollish type of comment. No big deal, I’ll just delete it.
Wait. I can’t delete it? I can only “mute” it? When I did so, muting it removed it from my screen when I was logged in, but when I was logged out, it was still there. Meaning it was there for all to see and could continue to do damage. That damage takes different forms. Bad comments encourage bad comments. Bad comments drive good participants away. Bad comments encourage how people view your show and your community. “Oh, it’s OK to say that here? I see.” If you want respectful community, you have to fight for it.
I looked and, sure enough, could see no way to delete it. The normal option was gone. As far as I know, I was logged into my channel, into the account that would have access to this functionality. A day later, after receiving a few more inappropriate or vulgar comments, I returned to YouTube to close comments on my videos. And then I saw, I was able to delete comments again.
I’m not sure what happened. I don’t think YouTube actually took away the ability to delete comments on your own channel because that just doesn’t make sense. Maybe it was my fault in some way. Maybe I was logged into a different account, somehow. Maybe it was a bug tied to the Google+ integration with YouTube comments. Whatever it was, it was gone. And I was glad. Because, in that brief period of time where I couldn’t delete comments (or, at least, I think I couldn’t), the community I had built was vulnerable.
It wasn’t such a big deal with this series because I have not hosted it for a while and comments are less frequent than they used to be. At some point, I probably will close the comments on my videos, once they reach a certain age. But I couldn’t help but think what it would have meant for a show I was actively hosting.
If you want a respectful comments section, where people have conversations free of personal attacks, you have to delete comments. Otherwise, you’ll get these nasty comments and a lot of the cool people will be driven away because they don’t want to deal with that noise or be attacked.
Many YouTubers don’t bother, feeling it isn’t worth the investment of time to read and moderate comments. Many YouTubers reach a certain size and decide they can no longer spend the time because it becomes unwieldy. And that is the time when you have many personal attacks in your comments. Many YouTubers simply want as many comments as possible because it leads to their videos getting more views from people coming back to tear each other apart. All of this is OK – if that is what you want.
But if you want respectful community on YouTube, that pursuit dies if you lose the ability to delete comments.
If I enjoy watching a video I really enjoy reading some of the comments afterwards. It would be a shame to close the comments off unless of course you could no longer spare the resources to monitor them.
Thanks for the comment, Sandy. That’s cool, I’m sure there are plenty of people who feel similar to you.
The problem with not being able to delete them is that you are not even given the choice to monitor them. You have two choices: not allow them or allow everything.
At some point, I’ll close comments on Soda Tasting just because it will have been so long since I did the show and it won’t be a good use of my time. Not there yet, though. Could be getting close. :) But the comments that have been made will still be there, I presume, so there will still be comments for people to read after they’ve watched the video.
Patrick
I absolutely agree with you – it sounds like there was a bug of some kind, or as you suggested, a cookies/sessions issue.
Incidentally, have you seen the Google error message that pops up when their servers are unavailable? It is something about having an office monkey fix the site soon.
Have a great day and keep up the good work!
Thanks Sandy. I appreciate it. Yeah, I don’t think Google actually did it, but the experience lends itself to thought.
I think I may have seen an error message like that before, yeah. Seems like a temporary thing in my cases.
Thanks again,
Patrick
now i click unpublish from feed, and it says comment is hidden. refresh the page, they are still there. youtube doesnt allow to delete comments anymore. if anybody knows what is causing this and how to fix it, please reply. thanks.
Hey Timmy,
Thanks for the comment. Are you using the “Hide this user’s comments on this channel” option?
Patrick
Hi patrick thx for response. No they are my own comments on my “feed” ehere all my likes and subs show up. I used to be able to delete them, now it doesnt work anymore. I click “unpublish from feed” then refresh the page and they are still there always.
Sorry to hear that, Timmy. Are you also posting your comments on a Google+ profile? I wonder what happens if you delete the comments on your profile.
No, they are not showing up on the google + page. Im also unable to disconnect the google + page from the youtube account without having to delete the youtube account entirely.
Sorry Timmy. I don’t think I’m much help here!