#nomorecraptions

Kind of sad Tom Scott will be stepping back. He is one of the big voices on the platform urging people to caption their YouTube videos.

moodboard of youtube autocaptions accurately captioning every word spoken in this half hour video except ‘tornado’, which unfortunately happened to be the topic of the video...

Watch the above video for more info, or click here to go to the Creator Insider video and comment to let YouTube know this is a bad decision!

What is Say What?

We're a start-up collective-structured organization that aims to provide free and affordable closed captioning for online video creators. We are currently in the planning and recruiting stages. Our mission is to make YouTube and other online video content accessible, enjoyable and equitable to those with hearing and auditory processing barriers. We also promote the use of captions to others who find correct captions and transcripts helpful for whatever means. Why Are We Needed? Transcribing audio and creating closed captions is a time-intensive task. Many active creators on YouTube cite the issue of time constraints for not creating their own captions. Because of the time-intensive nature of captioning, recruiting and compensating captioners can be very expensive for creators who have a high volume of videos. YouTube created an option for creators to allow for viewers to submit and edit captions which is a help for those with supportive responsible communities. It, unfortunately, also leads to abuse of the system with viewers intentionally adding in incorrect captions and comments. There are also other sites such as Twitch with video content without community captioning options and sites without any captioning options which we aim to work with as well.

Short Term Goals (Year 1):

Recruit a small team of captioners, translators, editors, and advisors.

Develop an effective training program for new captioners.

Establish relationships with a group of online video creators on YouTube and provide captions for their videos

Complete and file 501(c)(3) application.

Long Term Goals:

Recruit a large multilingual and diverse team of captioners, translators, editors, and advisors.

Recruit grant writers and support staff.

Build relationships with streamers and creators on Twitch and other sites to provide caption files for videos and campaign for more user-friendly and robust captioning systems.

Launch a website with recruitment information, donation capability, and a correction submission system.

Create a placement program for captioners to join creative teams of high-volume networks and creators.

Where Will the Crowd-Funded Funds Go?

We need funds for:

Legal Organization (Corporation) fees

501(c)(3) advising and filing fees

Compensation for non-volunteer staff and incidental and administrative support of volunteers

Promotional (advertising, design etc.) costs for start-up exposure

Web hosting

Administrative costs

Other incidental and 3rd party costs associated with the upkeep of the organization.

Sounds Great. How Can I Help? We are currently in need of donations for start-up funds and are accepting unpaid volunteers to help with captioning, promotion, administration, legal and financial support, branding/design, advising etc. These initial volunteer positions are likely (but not guaranteed) to lead to paid positions in the organization. If you are interested you can fill out a volunteer application here If you have questions you can email Liz at [email protected]

Transparency Policy:

Proposed or working Budgets, quarterly cashflow, and annual financial reports will be available after the first of each business quarter (or by January 30th for annual reports) by request by emailing Liz Pantelis at [email protected] The current head of the organization has auditory processing issues (from autism) and is not Deaf. We aim to recruit key players in our organization who are part of the Deaf community and will keep the public up to date on our executive and management team. A not-for-profit organization (501(c)(3)) does not mean that we will all be unpaid volunteers. There will be employees and executives with salaries and paid contractors as needed. Salary reports and diversity reports will be available on request by emailing [email protected] QUESTIONS / INQUERIES / PRESS - Liz at [email protected]

Sup. Hello mates. It is time for my unnecessary opinion, but you know what else is unnecessary?

People fucking with YouTube captions.

Hi. My name is Yuè and I am a quite recent Dan and Phil fan. My friend Sammy dragged me into this. I mean, I’d known of Dan and Phil for ages, but I never actually watched their stuff. But then I started their Sims stuff and things escalated. I even went to Interactive Introverts! 

Being a recent fan means that I have a lot to catch up on (I just found out the story behind the Lady Door song at ii), so I’ve been watching Dan and Phil’s videos lately and there’s one thing that I have noticed.

Yes, that’s right. 

Dan and Phil give people the option to add captions in all kinds of languages. In theory, this is pretty cool. Captions are a useful way to understand videos and allowing people to add them in their own language makes it more accessible. In reality, this happens.

A lot.

Now, I am a hearing person who always uses captions because I like reading along, but some people need these to actually understand the fucking videos. And there are all sorts of “craptions” (thanks Rikki Poynter for that word).

You have craptions that make it difficult for people to distinguish the captions from captions.

“Oh, great, Dan is at least telling his viewers that this is not a good ide-”

“-nevermind.” (The first time I watched this video, I had the volume turned down cause I was in public. Big mistake.)

Then we have people commenting on whatever Dan or Phil is doing in their videos.

Yes, okay, you can see that Dan is not amused. No need to put it in there. And then you can say: “Hey, this is just a caption explaining the video.” Well, it isn’t as bad as some others and video descriptions are pretty cool, but a long sentence like that doesn’t stay on the video for 10 seconds or so. Often, when people add their long unnecessary comments, it’s pretty confusing. You see a lot of text in a small amount of time and you wonder if you’ve missed something. Then you go back and- 

Oh. Nope. Just someone’s unnecessary comment. Wonderful.

Don’t even get me started on this one:

Neither Dan or Phil were speaking at this moment and these words appeared for such a small moment that I reversed the video several times because I thought I had missed something. I mean, I put the video on 0,5 speed in order to make the petty “oof” screenshot because it was gone so fast.

Not only that. Usually, the unnecessary comments are put between () or []. Not this time. Again, I could hear that this was just a bullshit comment. Not everyone can do that.

Besides, unnecessary comments? Yup. Those craptions happen:

I know that Dan and Phil are basically Meme Lords at this point (I mean, that video is seriously called Top Dan Memes of 2017), but if they’re not outright memeing in their videos, just don’t put dem memes in the captions. Leave your WIGs and THICCCCs out of this.

Dan did indeed say thic in an extravagant way, but the extra Cs were still not needed and same goes for the unnecessary comment.

I don’t even know what to say about this one:

Or the smaller craptions in the middle of a sentence. Those are fun as well. It’s not as if it totally messes up the sentence or anything. Sure, why not: 

Yup. I seriously have a damn collection of screenshots of craptions on Dan and Phil videos because a) I’ve been ranting to Sammy about this, but it just keeps coming back and b) I’m Very Annoyed.

People fucking need those captions, okay? Do they know how awful it is what they're doing? Probably not cause they probably don't rely on their own shitty captions to understand the videos and enjoy the content. I get that most people don’t have bad intentions. They just want to have fun. But their fun time is not fun for others.

I mean I watch videos with captions when it's available because I can choose to do that and I like that. And when this shit happens I can rely on the sound to distinguish what is real and what is bullshit and if it annoys me too much I just turn off the captions all together.

BUT I CAN DO THAT, OKAY. I DON’T RELY ON THOSE THINGS.

Jesus, I don’t even need those captions and it already annoys me like no other. I can’t even imagine what it is like for people who actually rely on them. Those things are there for a reason. People need them. You can't just claim it and bullshit on it. People need those captions to understand the bloody video. 

I’ve started deleting the unnecessary shit in the captions, since everyone, including me, can edit the current captions and I was happy to see that others have done it as well. Thanks to YouTube, it just takes a long while to actually have them published. They’re luckily not on all videos. I mean, from what I’ve seen it’s still a small portion of all the videos, but honestly, one is already too much.

This is especially difficult in youtube things, where the autocaptions are absolute crap and are the worst when they’re most needed for many people.

Captions are not the place for jokes. Captions are necessary for many people.

By “many people” I mean that according to WHO, about 5% of people are d/Deaf/HOH. I mean that 5-7% of people are estimated to have (Central) Auditory Processing Disorder - but it’s thought to be highly under and misdiagnosed so it’s likely much more prevalent. I mean that autistic people (1-2% of people) are often not diagnosed either because it doesn’t quite fit the criteria or because it’s thought to basically be a package deal by many people. Even accounting for high overlap here, that’s still around 10% of people. Not counting anything else that could make people need captions.

This just arrived today!! Thank you to @rikkipoynter for starting the #NoMoreCRAPtions campaign! No more crappy auto-captions or joke/troll captions, get in there and caption your videos and make them accessible to your d/Deaf, HoH, APD, and all other members of your audience that need them!

http://bonfire.com/nomorecraptions