Vague-a-ries: YouTube has been designed by idiotic monkeys.
Today, preparing for a future project when this blog has some video content created by myself on YouTube, I tried to set up a channel. This was easy, to a point. I wanted to have a channel called:VaguestIdeas
however I managed to make a small mistake and typed:
VaguestiDeas
and hit enter. I immediately realized my mistake, and thought that should be easy to correct. I was probably momentarily seized by Steve Jobs syndrome, that annoying impulse to lowercase "i" as an initial letter (maybe I should get checked out, it may be indicative of something worse, what? too soon?).
Scrabbling around the menus I couldn't find anything to let me rename, change or delete my channel name, which depending on where you look in YouTube is suddenly my YouTube username as well. Using the "help" feature gives you a list of questions asked on a forum style help, with answers relevance voted on by users. This is even more frustrating as it forces you to pour through irrelevance to try to glean an answer, this does not constitute help in my book. The "answers" seemed to point to the idea that there is nothing you can do except close your account entirely and set up a new account, which would require a unique email address, not the one you already used, and you couldn't have the channel name you already used because, although they store the case of your deleted account that never had anything posted against it, the check is not case sensitive, and that channel name, though never used, can never be used again, ever.
When I selected an option to allow me to directly post my own question, it tries to misdirect you to a page that has already asked questions similar to your "summary", but doesn't have a text box, forcing me to hope that clicking on a link marked "Continue" would actually bring me to where I had intended to go in the first place. Here's what I submitted as a question:
I have just set up a channel, but have done nothing with it. When I set it up I mistyped the capitalization -VaguestiDeas as opposed to the desired VaguestIdeas. I cannot believe that there is no way to edit/correct this. That you've developed a system that 1. allows such a momentary mistake as when your finger happens to hit the shift key to be etched in stone, 2. doesn't at least warn you that "hey you better be careful here, because we're not going to let you change this, ever"
This may seem a trifling request, I appreciate, in my case at least, I spelled the channel as I wanted it, so I couldn't delete and recreate the channel, as, although there is no data associated with it, your system will see it as "used" already.
Most frustrating of all is that your help system directed me to questions about deleting my account, and suggested that was the only workaround, and that I'd have to use a unique email address, other than the one I already have. Help systems which return irrelevant or incomplete answers show both laziness and indifference on your part as a developer. You should develop a clear comprehensive reference explanation of how your accounts '/ usernames / and channels work, not rely solely on whatever partial answer pops into the head, of knowledgeable, but blinkered forum style responses.
In my case it is a cosmetic error, but one that any users would see against any videos I wanted to post. So I look stupid rather than Google/YouTube who should look stupid for sitting on a pile of money rather than having developers create the most basic functionality imaginable.
Now I'm pretty much pissed off at YouTube, a company that are clearly sitting back on the benefits of their one killer idea, and within the fold of GoogleEarth (not the software product from Google, but the new name they've given our planet, which apparently they own through one of their subsidiaries), they don't have to care. They may be burning all their money, or more likely just jerking off into wads of disposable 100's as they index all the porn on the internet.
Labels: My Tasteless Opinions, Vague-a-ries
posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 11:35 am
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