Especially for non-devs that are not used to following technical documentation, I think that Youtubers/bloggers are essential to get people up and running, and trying new things.
It would be neat to display their content in a more official/visible way to help people get there. Maybe videos/tutorials could be a new section that’s included in the documentation for each integration?
I know they are getting acknowledge by the community and from the Nabu Casa side as well, but I think it could be even more. I’ve certiantly would’ve given up numerous times on different things if it weren’t for content creators posting a tutorial to follow.
You’re right that video guides can be really helpful.
One of the reasons they are not promoted more is that, unlike text, video can’t be edited easily to keep up with developments, so links from forum posts (for example) can become misleading quite quickly.
There are multiple examples where videos even early this year don’t have the same UI as current versions of HA have now.
While I can understand some folks respond to video better, Jack’s right video content stales out way too fast. It’s great to get you started but people then need to read the docs… The staff would have to continually scrub the videos posted to ensure they still match. And they don’t have enough time in the day to get to all the work as it is…
I agree that how-to videos tend to get outdated relatively quickly, however be aware that anyone can post one or more communiy guides in the Community Guides forum section which then kind-of acts like a wiki-page so you can include links you YouTube videos in a such communiy guide:
Less easy to find are external sites with links to more content creators or even other communities as tips on what video creators, blogs, and podcasts to follow, like example frenck’s Awesome Home Assistant (curated list of amazingly awesome Home Assistant resources hosted on GitHub so take change submission via pull requests and issues):
Well I think that you deeply underestimate users if you assume that they won’t understand that a video is not always up to date, especially if it’s marked as community made.
The same problem exists for videos on Youtube today. I simply advocate for easier ways for people to find them.
I wish I could agree with you on this one. Because it’s really indicative of deeper issues. But exactly the opposite has been unequivocally proven true over and over and over and over and over… Just do a quick search on how many posts contain ‘and I watched this video and’. Most people do not care to even bother to search. The pattern Is repeatedly watch video, fail. Go to forum.
Unfortunately we see a lot of people who want instant gratification, just the yaml and don’t want to or care to put any time into research. Net result, we have to explain why the video they watched isn’t valid anymore. Further adding to confusion.
We STILL get questions about where xyz is after the UI overhaul that moved most of the settings into the settings menu… That tells me the video they watched was > 2 years old…
This is absolutely among the top issues we run into addressing issues for newbies here. (not even being hyperbolic) Good on the creators some of them I even call friends but no - I would not at all want this. Its already hard enough without signing someone up to constantly scrub the vid list. No creator wants to put an expiry date on something that makes them money but it’s what would be necessary before doing this.
If they’d agree ( and I mean truly agree and follow up) to a video disclaimer up front and a message onscreen reminding the user that the video was released on xyz and after ABC they really need to seek more up to date content… (good luck with that) I’d change my answer.