techPresident - YouTube debate - Comments

Interesting, I've already

der74hva3 — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:05:21 -0400

Interesting, I've already seen this in some forum. If I find the link, i'll put it here.

wou

der74hva3 — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:28:58 -0500

wou

What was CNN really doing?

tlsmith — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:24:58 -0500

As I look back at the debates, both the Democratic and Republican, it appears CNN wanted to try to mash up a serious debate with an entertainment program. The questions selected generally dealt with gays, God, guns, and immigrants. Their objective wasn't so much to inform us as to highlight differences amongst the candidates, which they did, especially between Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson. Huckabee, the consensus winner of the debate per the mainstream media, wasn't asked a question until about 26 minutes into the debate! One of the undecided Republicans who watched the debate and commented on it for CNN even said that she might vote for Edwards if he was the (Democrat's) nominee.

I have a strong feeling that this format will be back. Perhaps not with YouTube as a title sponsor, but we will see this internet town hall style debate in the future. How do I know this? I can give you 4,400,000 reasons why. That number is the number of people who watched the debate, which is quadruple CNN's normal weeknight viewership.

[places tin foil hat on head] I wonder if CNN had an objective of trying to discredit the internet as a news source so people would turn back to them for their news. [removes tin foil hat]

CNN Demeans the Internet and the Candidates

Tama — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:58:50 -0500

Horrible. CNN did the worst job of all the debates they've hosted. They chose redundant questions that made the YouTube citizen involvement format look shallow; that demeaned the candidates and led them into mud slinging (well ok Romney and Giuliani don't need much assistance in that) and that should embarrass Republican voters. I felt like CNN really made Republicans look small minded and narrowly focused on issues that are not the most critical for our nation at this point in history. How many guns do you own!? The confederate flag?! That ridiculous opening song!? It was appalling and I can't begin to understand CNN's decision making process. Get the debates off of TV. Bring them totally ONLINE - please!

I won't do a separate post

Zephyr Teachout — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 03:50:14 -0500

I won't do a separate post on this because I'm sounding like a broken record, but Huckabee's web site was the best for post-debate. They have an easy to read debate play by play, with its own take, but not as cluttered with spin as Thompson's play by play.

Also, the site has an intro to Huckabee for first-timers at the top of the page.

Thompson's was the second best.

"Overlooked" is a self-fulfilling prophecy

flywheel — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:40:24 -0400

Relegating newer videos to an "overlooked" section (as was done at Community Counts) formally sequesters less popular videos into a lower tier and further reinforces the "popularity effect" of the leading videos.

But that's probably the best you can do for now. For the long run, consider this: One of the things I was working on was a grid that would open in random order and could then be sorted in various ways (tag, title, author, current popularity, the user's own rating, etc.).

on Randomization of 10qs videos

Micah L. Sifry — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:53:29 -0400

We're aware of the issue, and the site will start to dynamically display a column of "Overlooked" videos on the right-hand third of the front page...as soon as there are enough videos in the system to push some off the front page because of the popularity effect.

Any, any user is free to take the embed code for a particular video and put it on their own site, which means there are plenty of ways for people to drive attention to what they think of as deserving questions.

Good suggestion

Ruby Sinreich — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:36:09 -0400

Perhaps the front page could present 3 separate columns of videos: most popular, newest, and random. I especially think newer videos need more exposure as it will be hard for them to catch up to the number of votes on ones that were posted early on.

Randomization

flywheel — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:44:11 -0400

I see now that the 10questions site provides a button to randomize the display of videos. I'd suggest setting things up to invoke it on page load.

There's another way. It might be a better way.

flywheel — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:23:14 -0400

I see that 10questions is essentially a reworking of CommunityCounts, which is a great idea overall. In particular, I think the the idea of soliciting candidate responses to the selected questions and then having another round of voting on their responses is outstanding.

Nevertheless, what's going on here repeats some of the most glaring shortcomings of CommunityCounts. I think there's lots of room for improvement.

Frankly, the failure to randomize the display of videos on load makes it patently unfair. That means that the "front page" videos will get increasingly greater attention than the others, and there will be an ever widening gap between the leaders and the also rans. You're replicating the same tiering problem of the current presidential campaign.

Moreover, I find site performance to be rather pokey, which makes it hard to use.

I'm all for developing a technology which can be used to compel the candidates to answer citizens' questions. I've thought deeply about these problems because, like David Colarusso, I've also put a lot of effort into creating technology that could facilitate online democracy. I used to call it Indaba.org. Now it's called ChoiceRanker.com.

The main difference is that I use a ranked choice/Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) interactive ballot rather than a thumbs-up or down contest.

To see what I mean, here's a link to a poll that includes the videos from the CNN/YouTube debate this past summer.

http://www.choiceranker.com/election.php?eid=153

The current implementation of choiceranker is very good at dealing with crowded fields of up to 10 and is OK up to maybe 25 or 50, but it would be better to have some kind of subgroup vetting once the choices exceed a few dozen. I have a strong vision of what needs to be done, but I don't have the resources to do it on my own.

In this overstimulated age, building a better mousetrap isn't enough. You also need to invest in a lot of billboards before people will know where to find your door.

Human nature

Ruby Sinreich — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:51:43 -0400

You seems to assume the worst about people, Wacko. It's obviously very early to tell, but the most showy videos so far have been voted to the bottom of the pile.

I have to believe that humans (which many Americans are) really want the best for each other - however they see it. Otherwise, why would you want them to vote at all?

(I'm not just saying this b/c my video is on the top of the pile right now. I consider that an accident of timing and don't expect it to last long.)

This will work great (for the NYT and MSNBC)

LonewackoDotCom — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:26:28 -0400

Just as long as your goal is for the candidates not to be asked tough questions, this format will work great. Which is probably what the major sponsors want. The last thing the NYT and MSNBC want would be for the candidates to be asked really tough questions. And, that's definitely the last thing the Democratic and Republican parties want.

As TP knows, I outlined a different approach, and I've even started implementing that (example: http://nomoreblather.com/yt2/uninspected-cargo-containers ).

My approach would weed out the Obama Girls and snowmen; the TP/NYT/MSNBC approach will guarantee those type of questions will be right at the top. Which is probably exactly what NYT and MSNBC want.

What a bunch of morons!

crmarble — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:30:59 -0400

If the Republicans drop out of the YouTube/CNN debate, they'll only be hurting themselves in an election in which they are at a disadvantage. If they think that Republicans won't watch it, or else that all the questions are liberal, then they're not paying any attention at all to the new political landscape of this country.

As a democrat-leaning voter, I want the Democrats to win. But I also want to see what the Republicans have to say about different issues so that I know what it would be like to have one of them as President if the country decides to elect another Republican. And the perfect format for really seeing what they're made of is the YouTube questioning.

YouTube debate is on a volatile date

Freedomfighter — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 19:46:42 -0400

Since the report on the Iraq surge is due September 15, having a debate at that time would be lost.

The political affiliation of YouTubers

Arlen — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:22:50 -0400

Haha, as somebody who has put up plenty of liberal videos up on YouTube, I can confirm that yes, there are an awful lot of conservative YouTubers who are not afraid to leave comments on things.

Seriously, I really haven't noticed a hugely disproportionate difference between the number of liberals and the number of conservatives on YouTube... I really haven't seen evidence that one is far and away more present than the other.

As a side note, who wants to join me in predicting that the Republican debate will get more video question submissions than the Democratic debate did? The Dem one attracted 2989 submissions. The GOP one already has 149 entries and they only opened it up on Tuesday. And they have until September. Now that people saw how neat the Dem one is, there are sure to be plenty more people uploading videos for the Republican one, although I'm not sure about whether or not this would be an indication of there necessarily being more people on YouTube who are Republican than Democrat-- probably more an indication of the greater exposure this format has attracted.

Also as an aside, I'm willing to bet that a significant chunk of the questions submitted are submitted by people who aren't YouTube users. That is, people who signed up for an account just so they could participate but haven't been active on YouTube before, for instance the Reverend who asked the gay marriage question in the Democratic debate only signed up for an account after a member of his congregation heard about the debate and thought it'd be a good opportunity. The majority of question-askers are undoubtedly regular YouTube users, but there's probably also a substantial chunk of submitters that are using the site for the first time.

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