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There are quite a few answers out there which are linking against YouTube-Videos for solutions.

I see several problems with it:

  • Might not be work-safe, due to sound and/or corporate filters.
  • Might be unsafe, because sometimes the Overlays of the videos are containing 'questionable' content at best (Make over $ 5.000 in one month!).
  • It's harder to determine with a few glances if it is a fitting solution.

My question is now, is it a good thing to link against videos?

Edit: I quickly wrote this OData-Query which will fetch every answer with a youtube-link and sort it by score. This does return quite a few more answers than I believed I was talking about.

Edit2: As pointed out by Jeff (and as I later realized) the interesting posts are the short ones, not that by score.

Related: Provide a way to embed videos in answers

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    You've seen "quite a few" such answers? I haven't seen any. No, I don't think this is a good idea at all. Links?
    – Cody Gray
    Commented May 3, 2011 at 10:12
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    Do you mean specifically for Stack Overflow, or for the Stack Exchange Network in general? On Gaming, we make heavy use of them and even got this request approved as a result, so I'm a bit opposed to going against them network-wide. But for Stack Overflow only? I can't even figure why you'd link a video in the first place, haha~
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented May 3, 2011 at 10:21
  • @Grace Note, @Cody Gray: I was mainly speaking about the trilogy, especially SU, but I think I've also seen some on SO. I can't say anything about SF because I'm not often over there.
    – Time Traveling Bobby
    Commented May 3, 2011 at 10:35
  • @Grace: Well if the question is "How do I concisely implement Conway's Game of Life in APL" there really is no better answer than this.
    – sepp2k
    Commented May 3, 2011 at 10:38
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    @Grace Note, @Cody Gray: Please see my edit, I wrote an OData-Query which is fetching all answers with links against YouTube Videos...it's returning ~2,000 answers...way more than I believed I was talking about. :/
    – Time Traveling Bobby
    Commented May 3, 2011 at 10:56
  • @Grace Note: And yes, I agree that this is actually useful for Gaming (and maybe other sites, too). But it itches a little to see them on SO/SU/SF.
    – Time Traveling Bobby
    Commented May 3, 2011 at 11:01

2 Answers 2

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If you are referring to answers that just contain a link to a YouTube video, then I think they should be considered as any other answer that just contains a link. Answers that just contain a link are normally not considered answers. They could be answers if the OP is specifically asking for a link (to documentation, to a language module, etc). In that case, the question is probably going to be closed as not constructive.

If the answer explains what to do, and uses the video as reference, I think the link is fine.
I cannot think of answers on Stack Overflow that need a video, but I imagine in some cases they could be useful. I am not sure of the reason to choose link to a video instead of a link to a blog page, though; I would rather a link to a blog page containing a link to a video would be more appropriate, but that could not be true, depending on the question being asked.

In any case, I think it would be a courtesy to report that the link is a YouTube link, to allow users who are not in the right place to see it to follow the link when they can.

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Your query is kind of useless, IMO, because what you want is the shortest posts that link to YouTube.

In the context of a larger post, a YouTube link could be perfectly relevant.

https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/s/1297/find-shortest-youtube-videos-in-answers

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    And then I suspect a mod can go through deleting most of those answers... The chances that a single link to a YouTube video is actually a good answer seem relatively slim.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented May 3, 2011 at 11:08
  • Yes, I agree...I realized that after I thought about my edit.
    – Time Traveling Bobby
    Commented May 3, 2011 at 11:28

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