[DISCUSS] Pros/cons of videos for technical documentation?
[DISCUSS] Pros/cons of videos for technical documentation?
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?
Documentation is different from demonstration. Text (with graph or animation interspersed to unpack unintuitive terms) wins for documentation. Video could be good for demo if presented in a no-nonsense manner.
Documentation to me is the instructions manual of the technology. Everything from get started to specifics and edge cases.
Most videos are demonstrations or tutorials of how to use it. They're no different from a blogger (do people even say that word anymore) who writes up a how to guide.
Clearly different audiences.
Not certain why OP is annoyed at this to post this question in two different places.
I’m sure why they’re doing it; there’s been an increase in “how to” videos sitting in search results as the documentation instead of as demos. Often it’s even that way for official commercial products; the product comes with a link to a video instead of printed or online documentation.
No idea why it’s happening; it could be a search engine thing more than a “wrong media for the task” thing.
The best I’ve seen include a transcript, even better when it is clickable and updated the position of the video. Pure video isn’t great, lots of wasted time. Pure text is better, but also takes a lot of attention and focus. For very in depth information text can’t be beat though, unless they are making a ton of separate videos which also gets cumbersome.
I rarely watch videos except maybe car repair, i can extract info from text exponentially faster.
The only goal of technical documentation in video format is to monetize it on YT. It's a lesser format in every way and people create it only to get some $ out of their work. It's good for the creators (it's easier for them to monetize), bad for users. Let's just create a startup where you will be able to monetize technical documentation. Like only fans but for programmers.
Both formats have their place.
In my opinion written documents should be the primary source, and can be enhanced by using video to show details that are difficult to explain succinctly on paper. A picture really can be worth a thousand words.
I really hate video, prefer reading. But by reading the material to a camera, people get paid by youtube, and then set up a patreon for buying access to the material they read. Everybody loses, hooray:-(
For me personally it's easier to watch a video than to read a blog post or whatever these days. That's mostly because I can listen/watch while doing chores. However, if I need to use it later there's just no way I can find it or find what was in it. I like the format of Theprimeagen in particular when he goes over blog posts, I can always refer to that when I want to. So I'd say:
- videos as a replacement for written media: no
- videos as an addition to written media: yes
I think Supabase does this well. The documentation is there, videos are more specific and lengthy
So as entertainment it's great, as technical reference it's terrible?
I’m dyslexic so videos are the best starting point for me. However, I don’t like all the lazy copycat tutorials out there on YouTube. A good comprehensive video course, or a quick informative video are essential for my process.
Unless it’s showing something very specific that handle be handled in inline screenshots I’m not watching it. It’s bad enough there’s project managers putting specs into loom and such. Docs should be easily searchable and fast to reference. Ain’t nobody got time to watch a video.
It sounds like adding subtitles (or at least a transcript underneath) to your videos would solve a few of your problems.
I'm not sure what you would be planning on hosting your videos on but at my work we use Microsoft Stream to host recordings (cost reasons) and it let's you search through the subtitles of videos as well as set chapter markers too, both of which I believe are also supported by public facing sites like YouTube too.
Of course, "why write a transcript when you could just write a document," and, fair. But if you've got a script for your video might as well make it into subtitles right? And besides some people, including myself, appreciate a video over written documentation so I can see the thought processes behind things rather than having to abstract it from screenshot or descriptions. I don't mind written documentation but when presented with the choice I'll go for the video