Quality v quantity

[Uncivilized Elk]

Again, we don't call the Transformers films "quality films" simply because they get a bunch of people seeing them and earn a bunch of money. And again, film quality isn't judged by its box office gross, despite people having differing opinions on what constitutes a quality film.

You have a word. Popular. Use the word popular. The English language is obfuscated enough as it is without you trying to add to the ridiculousness by equating two words for no good reason whatsoever.

Quality has a definition, it's about the merit of something, about the level of craft behind the product. That's a completely separate category from popular, which can be something that has a lot of quality or none whatsoever. Stating how a dumb video with zero production values can become massively popular suddenly making that video quality makes no sense. You're degenerating what the word quality actually means for no reason, because you could simply be using the word popular in its place to begin with yet refuse to do so.

I think the only reason you even try to cling to the word "quality" over "popular" is because you have a mental impression that "quality" sounds like a better aspect and we generally have more praise for the things that are quality, when in actuality it's popularity you want. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

Your definitions also don't make sense because pre-gauging the popularity of something before you make it (especially as a small channel) is practically impossible. So you can't make a thread "quantity vs. popularity" because you can't predict popularity. When you say quality in this thread title and the opening post, what you actually mean is how much time, thought, and effort should be sunk into a video to make it seem like a high-quality video. You're not asking whether you should make a s****y gummy bear video or whatever that's gets millions of views. You're asking whether to allocate your time to make more content or make content that takes longer but feels like a higher-grade production.

To then insist partway through the thread that you meant popular when you say quality renders your entire topic inane and nonsensical.

 

[TheBossman]

Again, we don't call the Transformers films "quality films" simply because they get a bunch of people seeing them and earn a bunch of money. And again, film quality isn't judged by its box office gross, despite people having differing opinions on what constitutes a quality film.

You have a word. Popular. Use the word popular. The English language is obfuscated enough as it is without you trying to add to the ridiculousness by equating two words for no good reason whatsoever.

Quality has a definition, it's about the merit of something, about the level of craft behind the product. That's a completely separate category from popular, which can be something that has a lot of quality or none whatsoever. Stating how a dumb video with zero production values can become massively popular suddenly making that video quality makes no sense. You're degenerating what the word quality actually means for no reason, because you could simply be using the word popular in its place to begin with yet refuse to do so.

I think the only reason you even try to cling to the word "quality" over "popular" is because you have a mental impression that "quality" sounds like a better aspect and we generally have more praise for the things that are quality, when in actuality it's popularity you want. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

Your definitions also don't make sense because pre-gauging the popularity of something before you make it (especially as a small channel) is practically impossible. So you can't make a thread "quantity vs. popularity" because you can't predict popularity. When you say quality in this thread title and the opening post, what you actually mean is how much time, thought, and effort should be sunk into a video to make it seem like a high-quality video. You're not asking whether you should make a s****y gummy bear video or whatever that's gets millions of views. You're asking whether to allocate your time to make more content or make content that takes longer but feels like a higher-grade production.

To then insist partway through the thread that you meant popular when you say quality renders your entire topic inane and nonsensical.

I think you may have got me all wrong. I did not set up this thread to start with to gauge an opinion for my channel, more to challenge peoples perceptions. We all put faith in the fake perception of "quality" when not knowing the true meaning behind the word. I do not care for semantics when it comes to my channel, a simple thumbs up or down will always suffice. I would rather chat to people but that does not neccesarily gauge what people think of my channel, more that the video aroused them enough to want to comment.

Quality is in the eye of the beholder. It is an opinion rather than fact. Therefore if we challenge the opinion maybe we could all help eachother grow instead of just throwing this word out there, which in my eyes is extremely condescending in a lot of ways. You have to improve the quality of your channel... WHY??? To get more subs and become popular. Therefore the gauge of quality on Youtube is in fact popularity due to quality being a perception rather than solid fact. A well made video on Youtube is one that appeals to your audience and that the audience find quality, not you. Therefore of course popularity is key to this. It is at least a way of measuring quality.

I didn't once say I meant popularity or quality, more that I see them being in bed with eachother. Therefore my entire topic holds true meaning and purpose in my eyes. Again your perception on whether or not it is a quality topic is your own, for me I found a lot of quality points raised including your own. This is a forum after all and all opinions much be as respected as the next one. It helps that yours is also well worded and I do see where you are coming from. I would like you to open your eyes and see where I am coming from though. A quality business is one that makes money, Youtube is a business, the tripe that gets hundreds of millions of views makes the most money, therefore they are quality. Whether or not it is a quality you wish to be judged upon is tough to be honest, as that is Youtube. That is why it works and is so succesful. Youtube is quality, the highest quality in video hosting in the world, yet its most popular videos are One Direction and elsa spiderman videos. So by your definition of quality, Youtube is not quality, when it clearly is.

I just do not understand why a Youtubers quote who has over 2 million subs on 2 channels means that I am questioning what is on my channel though. That bit does annoy me.

quality
ˈkwɒlɪti/
noun
noun: quality; plural noun: qualities
1.
the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.

On Youtube we measure ourselves on views. We use popularity to gauge and get the help from bigger channels to find out how to be succesful. No matter what you think of their content, they excel at Youtube. They spend probably the least money and get the most views. Bravo to them.

 

[Uncivilized Elk]

A quality business is one that makes money

That's what people call a successful business.

Quality applied to business specifically is a far more complex ballgame than your attempt at simplifying it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_(business)

And to repeat yet again, a popular product in a market is not necessarily the highest-quality product in the market, and it may not be high quality at all. Equating the two words is a blatant mistake. They may overlap sometimes, but that's not an excuse to treat them as synonymous.

On Youtube we measure ourselves on views.

You might.
A lot of people don't.

Some people measure the channels they watch (and decide not to watch, obviously) based on actual perceived quality of the channel (in fact I'd argue most people do this), so when you equate popularity and quality you're just obfuscating the dialogue. If popularity means the exact same thing in the contexts you wish to use quality, you should still be using popularity, because others use quality in regards to how it's normally defined and utilized when describing something. If you say popularity, everyone will immediately know you're referring to the exposure/views a video has. If you say quality, a lot of people won't even think of that aspect of it.

And that's why this thread has become so nonsensical in that regard.
Because it seems like your real question is "How do I make the most money/get the most views?"
Yet you worded it the format of "quality vs. quantity," which has completely different implications, especially when applied to something that's a personal craft (and some might even go as far as to consider an art).

Edit: But if you purely want the highest views, in that case you should be studying the clickbait garbage that manages to acquire millions of views in a short timespan. But I bet you're also not actually wanting a clickbait-acquired community either, and you probably want to make videos on a specific topic you enjoy rather than the easiest one to hit it big in. And that's why this whole discussion really starts to feel like a case of "wanting your cake and eating it too."

 

[TheBossman]

That's what people call a successful business.

Quality applied to business specifically is a far more complex ballgame than your attempt at simplifying it:


And to repeat yet again, a popular product in a market is not necessarily the highest-quality product in the market, and it may not be high quality at all. Equating the two words is a blatant mistake. They may overlap sometimes, but that's not an excuse to treat them as synonymous.


You might.
A lot of people don't.

Some people measure the channels they watch (and decide not to watch, obviously) based on actual perceived quality of the channel (in fact I'd argue most people do this), so when you equate popularity and quality you're just obfuscating the dialogue. If popularity means the exact same thing in the contexts you wish to use quality, you should still be using popularity, because others use quality in regards to how it's normally defined and utilized when describing something. If you say popularity, everyone will immediately know you're referring to the exposure/views a video has. If you say quality, a lot of people won't even think of that aspect of it.

And that's why this thread has become so nonsensical in that regard.
Because it seems like your real question is "How do I make the most money/get the most views?"
Yet you worded it the format of "quality vs. quantity," which has completely different implications, especially when applied to something that's a personal craft (and some might even go as far as to consider an art).

Edit: But if you purely want the highest views, in that case you should be studying the clickbait garbage that manages to acquire millions of views in a short timespan. But I bet you're also not actually wanting a clickbait-acquired community either, and you probably want to make videos on a specific topic you enjoy rather than the easiest one to hit it big in. And that's why this whole discussion really starts to feel like a case of "wanting your cake and eating it too."

Again you act like this has anything to do with my channel. I put out content that I love, not click baity content, not amazing content for many, but content I love. I do not chase numbers I just enjoy the hell out of them. Of course I want to be succesful, but I am not making elsa Spiderman videos, I do gaming videos. I decided that as I spend 2-4 hours a night most nights but always over an hour gaming I might as well do it in a constructive way. All the time while learning to code games, my true career path. I record 1080p 60fps footage of me playing a game. Literally that is all. There are not many ways I can change that. I can edit (which I do occassionally, although I find most edits in games take away from the game so I generally just cut out walking bits) I just choose not to. I still record using top end codecs that take a lot of time to render in to a normal video whereas I could just use Xsplit to record and dump it straight online, which I have in past when my cpu was failing. But your attack on your perception of me and my channel is getting quite boring now. I do not want to stoop to that level.

Some people measure the channels they watch (and decide not to watch, obviously) based on actual perceived quality of the channel (in fact I'd argue most people do this), so when you equate popularity and quality you're just obfuscating the dialogue. If popularity means the exact same thing in the contexts you wish to use quality, you should still be using popularity, because others use quality in regards to how it's normally defined and utilized when describing something. If you say popularity, everyone will immediately know you're referring to the exposure/views a video has. If you say quality, a lot of people won't even think of that aspect of it.

This here though proves my point to its entirety. Thank you for this. We as viewers base what we view on actual perceived quality. Therefore if something is hugely popular, it must be quality in a lot of eyes. Quality is a perception, it can not be defined totally. It is all based on what we see as quality. As you say people go out to view quality content, something has 700million views then it has to fall in to the category of quality content. Just because an individual argues against the masses does not make it any less so. Your individual opinion, just like mine, have literally not weight on any of this. All we can do is interpret what we see. This thread was created to challenge that fact. It worked. The thread makes sense, but once again you just have to attack rather than think about it.

I will say this one more time, this thread had nothing to do with any change to my channel. I put a thought that a popular Youtuber had on to a thread and let it take its course. Along the way I added my opinion, which I obviously stand by. You seem to be as stubborn as me and see me as being as wrong as I see you.

If I solely wanted to get views/money I would just do toy unboxings with my 6,3 and 1 year olds and rake it in, I don't want to do that. I am a gamer.

 

[and_the-teddy_bach]

I don't agree with him on that. I think quality is far more important than quantity. That's not to say the people who put out a video every day have low quality videos.. but, if you're rushing your videos to get them out every single day or something then it will show in the video and people will lose interest.

So, for me at least, it's definitely quality over quantity... hence I only upload once a week.

Completely agree with you.

 

[Uncivilized Elk]

As you say people go out to view quality content,

No. I said some people measure a channel by its quality, not its views. That's a completely different statement. I added the caveat that some people will not watch a channel because it's not of high enough quality for them. That doesn't suddenly mean that every channel a person does choose to watch is of high quality - there's this thing called "acceptable" and "good enough," or sometimes even "brainless distraction."

something has 700million views then it has to fall in to the category of quality content.

For the last time, no!
Just because 700 million people might eat a McDouble, it doesn't make the McDouble a quality burger.

Just because quality is subjective, you can't randomly choose to redefine it to mean something that another word already means (thus making the redefining pointless anyway). The word good is subjective too, and yet tons of things became popular on the internet due to how BAD they are. By your logic, these things that are bad are actually good because they're popular. No... that's once again, redefining words that don't need to be redefined when a better word already exists to describe what you want to describe.


People go out to view garbage all the time. If I'm multitasking, I sometimes throw on a TV show which I don't think will be too good and thus doesn't need my full attention (but is tolerable enough that I wont just shut it off).

My friends and I once spent a portion of a whole day watching one of the most terrible TV shows we could find because it was amusing to make fun of it.

Even when I have money to afford something better, I still sometimes go out and eat a McDouble at McDonalds despite it being trash food.

And I personally rarely ever do this myself, but I'm aware of many people who go check out news on "drama" that they then state is stupid and a waste of time. And then they do this again over and over and over.


I'm hoping this will be the last time I repeat myself: quality is not equivalent to popularity. Some things may have both attributes. That doesn't mean those attributes are synonymous.

 

[TheDutchTexan]

The more popular you are the less people look at your quality. Strange but true. I myself am a fan of quality over quantity though. I just can't upload a video that I am not happy with. Which means 1 video a week, if that for me currently. If I did it for a dayjob I could probably manage 2 videos or perhaps 3 a week without loosing quality. It takes time to do your best.

 

[TheBossman]

No. I said some people measure a channel by its quality, not its views. That's a completely different statement. I added the caveat that some people will not watch a channel because it's not of high enough quality for them. That doesn't suddenly mean that every channel a person does choose to watch is of high quality - there's this thing called "acceptable" and "good enough," or sometimes even "brainless distraction."




For the last time, no!
Just because 700 million people might eat a McDouble, it doesn't make the McDouble a quality burger.

Just because quality is subjective, you can't randomly choose to redefine it to mean something that another word already means (thus making the redefining pointless anyway). The word good is subjective too, and yet tons of things became popular on the internet due to how BAD they are. By your logic, these things that are bad are actually good because they're popular. No... that's once again, redefining words that don't need to be redefined when a better word already exists to describe what you want to describe.


People go out to view garbage all the time. If I'm multitasking, I sometimes throw on a TV show which I don't think will be too good and thus doesn't need my full attention (but is tolerable enough that I wont just shut it off).

My friends and I once spent a portion of a whole day watching one of the most terrible TV shows we could find because it was amusing to make fun of it.

Even when I have money to afford something better, I still sometimes go out and eat a McDouble at McDonalds despite it being trash food.

And I personally rarely ever do this myself, but I'm aware of many people who go check out news on "drama" that they then state is stupid and a waste of time. And then they do this again over and over and over.


I'm hoping this will be the last time I repeat myself: quality is not equivalent to popularity. Some things may have both attributes. That doesn't mean those attributes are synonymous.

I'm not redefining anything though. I am using the English language for what it is and pushing its boundaries. My mum was an English teacher and as she always said, English is a created language that evolves and mutates. It's not an exact science.

The whole point in language is to question and give ideas. This is what this thread did and I still do so. You see things way too literal and straight down the line. I'm not redefining a word I'm using it as it can be used. These channels are quality YouTube channels as they are popular. They excel. They are to be measured against. Going by your literal take on everything you actually can't argue that this makes them quality as the word quality is a sign of excellence and something we measure ourselves against. It's funny how condescending you've been throughout all this while still being wrong due to you not being able to use the English language. We give words meaning, the word doesn't give us meaning. Our opinion is our opinion and if enough people see something as excellent then it must be.

I'm out of this though. As stated before you have your opinion I have mine. Quality is how we define it and is completely subjective. Something we both agree on. I believe that the fact these channels are so successful makes them quality. They are quality entertainers (as they entertain so many people) and have quality business sense. You cant argue that my opinion on this is wrong as the word quality is fully based on opinion. And my opinion is my opinion.

 

[Lavinia Lahrese]

I'm a little confused about this also. I recently launched a weight loss series to my brand so that I could increase the quantity of videos that I am putting out. Based on the feedback, I'll see if its something my audience likes and wants more of... is anyone else out there doing the same thing?

 

[Tyron Fedrick]

I definitely consider a high, well done quality video uploaded once a month than a low quality video done 7 days a week.