and the reality is that this is a bug in the forum software, but not one that i think is worth the trouble fixing at this time. simple as that 
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-mouser
@mouser: Ahh, I understand now. Thankyou for explaining. I are now no longer confuzzled:
- (a) It is effectively a rule - and it apparently sits within the software for whatever passes for the CMS (Content Management System) for this website - that some text (any text, whether relevant or not) must accompany the posting of a video, otherwise the post cannot be published.
- (b) The same rule, however, does not apply to the posting of images, which can be published without any accompanying text whatsoever.
Yours and others' comments also help to explain the other thing that I were confuzzled by - why the text had to be spurious: (the explanation is that it
doesn't have to be spurious)
spurious /"spjU@rI@s/
· adj.
1 false or fake.
2 (of a line of reasoning) apparently but not actually valid.
3 archaic (of offspring) illegitimate.
– DERIVATIVES spuriously adv. spuriousness n.
– ORIGIN C16: from L. spurius ‘false’ + -ous.
Concise Oxford Dictionary (10th Ed.)
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However, where you say that
"...this is a bug in the forum software...", you presumably say so on the basis that the/any rule here would be (or is) assumed to be consistent, or something - that is, that it should be equally applicable to videos
and images - yes?
I'm not sure that that would necessarily be a correct assumption/interpretation though. One would need to imagine taking a look at the specification or taking a look inside the heads of the people who developed this system at the time and asking, "Under what circumstances might they have arrived at a decision to deliberately make this seemingly (to us, now) contradictory/inconsistent rule?"
If one did that, then one could arrive at the conclusion that it might well be a
deliberate rule, rather than a bug.
I mean,
someone would have had to code - or not code - that rule, and they would presumably have done so whilst working from (say) a specification, or a systems analysis, or a statement of work/requirements and then
tested it, and I can imagine conditions where the rule could be useful - e.g., (say) in the detection or avoidance of spam. For example, you would probably only need to look once at an image to see whether it was relevant to the thread (e.g., in the interesting things/stuff section, as
@wraith808 refers). However, you'd actually
have to watch a video to be able to accurately determine whether it was relevant or spam, or something else, so, obliging posters to add some (say) relevant/explanatory text would seem to make sense, and if they just put gobbledegook text instead then that could be a useful indicator for admins to take note of.
In terms of
rules, therefore, I consider that this inconsistency is possibly a good rule, rather than a "bug" per se.
I personally dislike being invited to look at a YouTube video without knowing what to expect from it, as these things invariably turn out to be a WOT (Waste Of Time) - time bandits - and I am frugal with how I spend my finite cognitive surplus (equates with experience of life) and do not wish to be merely a passive observer of elementary canned life (e.g., TV) unless I am deriving something developmental/educational or seriously entertaining/interesting from it - e.g., a good SF film (in my case, at any rate).
Most times I simply won't watch a YouTube if the poster can't be bothered to give some relevant background/contextual notes. That's why I usually try to post some relevant details when I post a YouTube link. It's similar to reading the back of a paperback and the foreword before one decides whether one wants to buy the book, or checking IMDB before one decides whether one wants to watch a video/movie.
As well as posting some relevant background/contextual notes - so people can decide whether they would want to spend any time watching the YouTube video - I also post the URL for the link, because I am aware that some browser add-ons block embedded YouTubes, but do not block URLs to YouTubes. Similarly, when I post images, I tend to provide some background/contextual notes, if that is relevant, and, whether it's an embedded YouTube or an image, I am aware of the need to leave text footprints, so that the forum Indexing and (say) Google spiders/crawlers can pick up meaningful data for later searches to use - makes it less of a needle-in-a-haystack search for subsequent enquirers - because a lot of what is recorded in this forum could arguably correctly be described as
knowledge, and that would mean that it was potentially intrinsically valuable, in and of itself, to not only the DC Forum members, but also the Internet community as a whole.
This leads me to the suggestion that there is an opportunity here to improve/expand the capture of Indexable knowledge in the forum, and
improve the ease of location of and access to that knowledge by DC Forum members and the wider community, if we:
- (a) consider putting the same/similar "must have some relevant text" rule in place for posting images, as a matter of good/best practice.
- (b) we consider recommending to people who post images containing text that they post the images as .TIFF files, and that we add an iFilter for .TIFF files (if not already done) to enable Indexing to pick up the text from the relevant .TIFF images (as per Windows Index/Search).
(Just a thought.)
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