cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/3560540
You probably have already noticed that nowadays it’s becoming fashionable online to share technical material via videos (eg YouTube.)
I somehow can understand the appeal of creating videos for sharing thoughts/news, esp b/c it takes way less time and focus compared to writing things (just hit the record button and go.)
But videos are. 👎 not index-able (at least locally)
👎 not searchable. 👎 not copy-paste friendly if at all. 👎 impossible to skim through.
👎 a major distraction from the train of thoughts.IMO, in most cases, the more effective and impactful medium of technical comms is the written form: a Mastodon toot, a blog post, a gist, a Pastebin entry or even a Facebook post!
What are your thoughts?
Technical documentation of API, Language constructs, and usage (a la mandoc) should always have a standard-compliant (any widely accepted help manual format like mdbook or texi) text form licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL). This is to ensure that freedom 01 (“The freedom to study how the program works”) is not obstructed in any way.
Videos are tougher due to having a much wider arrange of factors. First off, you’d want to make your videos accessible (using subtitles, on-screen graphics and not just a narration all the way through, translation to other languages). You’d also want to be able to share that video among your peers without obstruction. Just having it be hosted to a proprietary mass-media site like YouTube will not be enough. I have doubts about the “hit record and magic happens” premise, videos are a lot more daunting than text formats if you don’t have the prerequisite equipment and skills beforehand.
If you really want to create videos, you should have a text alternative to the video or at least a technical summary of the video’s topics attached alongside the video so that you can leverage both text and video alongside each other.