Unnatural Vegan: Online vegan community, discussion, ways to help each other and paywalls

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NonZeroSum
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Unnatural Vegan: Online vegan community, discussion, ways to help each other and paywalls

Post by NonZeroSum »

Just joined UV's patron because I remember someone saying about better levels of discussion that were being had on patron than on youtube, and there is some great stuff there including from H.S. Ross that was getting lost in the youtube comment section - (http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3001)

Anyways in the community section of the patron you can leave a message which UV might respond to so left some suggestions, you're welcome to read what I wrote because you might have a take on it I'd like to hear. I won't copy anyone's responses to my post on patron to respect the paywall though.

_____________________________________

Heya UV, I have a couple of suggestions but apologies at the outset if you've already considered this and I'm just saying hypothetical ideas that you've already disregarded as not useful to you.

I really value your educational content and it's of big interest to me at this point in my life, so I thought it was only right that I chip in some solidarity at the point where YouTube is basically acting like a bad boss docking pay without chances of appeal, since it's still going through it's growing pains and could happen again at any time, I'd encourage anyone interested in your content to do the same.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to stay on 5$ and will go down to 1$ at some point as I'm not in a very stable financial situation at the moment, but I know there are other ways I can help like transcribing videos, reviewing your content and sharing to friends and public to get others interested.

Sorry I know this will sound stingy to even talk about on a site to support you bringing in more money, but i think it would be great if you could make all discussion available to those who pay 1$ and then the thank you gifts to those who want to donate 5$, 20$, custom infinity after that, it's just I relish any shred of vegan community online, and would like to help in other ways if at all possible. I think the paywall makes sense to restrict to genuinely interested participants in discussion, without the need for a forum mod to police a free service, but yeah I would just like to see the discussion that was had on early video releases and work in progress scripts open to 1$ and above patrons after the video is already released, I think people would still pay what they are able to and it wouldn't be less than what you are currently receiving.

For ideas on ways people can participate here are some examples of reward schemes that other subscription channels use, which you could simply put out there as stuff which would help publicize the work you do, and share with you if it's something big you would want to know about/ add to your portfolio:

1. Write a Review. If you're a skilled writer who likes to talk about veganism, consider reviewing our site or a favorite episode for your website. We will give you press access to our site for one month in exchange for an honest and thoughtful review.

2. Transcribe. Transcribe our videos to text. Each one is approximately 10 minutes long and take 20 minutes to an hour to transcribe. In exchange, you'll get a free month membership to work on the transcription and then enjoy the rest of the time to watch what you like!

3. Translate. Do you speak a language besides English? Transcribe our text content into other languages -- especially valuable for vegan vocabulary that accurately reflects our nationalities.

4. Educate. Use our videos / photos / essays to illustrate your educational articles on your website or lectures. Go to colleges across the country? Share our ideas with your students.

5. Peer reviewed. Get studious about effective activism, writing your own research paper or graduate thesis? Interview our content producers or quote us and bring advocacy into the academic arena.

6. Fundraise. We are constantly donating membership subscriptions to community fundraising events. Check our Charity Support page or Facebook for updates about events. Throwing an event? Ask us for membership giveaways.

7. Earn Commission. Become an Affiliate and promote our site on your blog. Invite friends to sign up through your links.

I've transcribed 5 of your videos for the online forum philosophicalvegan.com, there might be an easy way for me to upload them to your videos if you went to this link and clicked 'on' to enable community contributions (you can still lock certain aspects and set it so you get to review them before they go public)
– https://www.youtube.com/timedtext_cs_queue?optin=true
- support.google.com/youtube/answer/6052538?hl=en

The only problem is like all these youtube tools in beta development, the usability function is really poor, on videos where I've seen it enabled to a limited degree, you have to caption manually and fiddle with the time codes which would take forever and stupidly laborious. So as a work around I've found it possible to upload a mirror video, auto-transcribe, edit and auto-sync, then download the transcription format (srt.) and re-upload it to the original video through the community contribution feature. The difference between 10-20 minutes and an hour or two. So if there's a way to enable the 'transcribe and auto-sync' tool through community contributions feature so others can upload them for you, that would be the easiest, second to that would be linking you the transcriptions in a google doc, then you upload them by going to video manager > edit specific video > Subtitles CC > Create new subtitles or CC > Transcribe and auto-sync > copy the text from word doc and paste into transcription window > set timings (automatically).

Here are some examples of transcripts I did earlier, they aren't complete as I left the very end post-script, out-take stuff off because I originally intended to quote your main thesis for an educational resource. But anyway now I know what I'm doing I'd be more than happy to link you the full length transcripts of any more that I do:

7 Reasons Why Cats are Terrible Pets
In essay form: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3126
In transcript form: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8g-aCUkn-ondTI1M0wwbzFxLUk

Alienation and the importance of focused activism
In essay form: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997
In transcript form: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8g-aCUkn-onR0ppd3p4dWc4dHM

Don't care about animals? 5 reasons you should still go vegan
In essay form: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3181
In transcript form: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8g-aCUkn-onM21rNW1xb2Zid3c

Ethical Milk: Is it possible and what would it cost?
In essay form: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3215
In transcript form: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8g-aCUkn-onUXFyZnBYSFpzcUE

Re: Stef Sanjati “Why I won’t go vegan” (some thoughts on transphobia)
In essay form: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3167
In transcript form: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8g-aCUkn-onMmFrbmJ1WHpWWGc

I know for some second or third language English people, that they find transcriptions really useful as they want to read as they listen. The punctuation and fixed auto transcript errors will also provide a better automatic google translation, that can be worked on to produce foreign language transcripts. As well as for the hard of hearing and having text people can easily quote when using you as a source on a topic.

Sorry that was super dense, in summary if you'd like to have me message you a google docs link of the cleaned up transcript when you make an educational video, in transcript and essay format, it only takes a few minutes to do, and you can add it to your closed captions. As a bonus here's an easy and free way to transcribe audio to text for anyone who's interested through youtube:

If you go to underneath the video title and username there should be 3 options: Add to, Share and More. Click on 'More' and it gives you a drop down list of; Report, Transcript, Statistics and Add Translation. Click 'Transcript' and a section will open between the video and description. Click on English (Automatic). Then if you right click and drag to highlight over the whole transcript section, click copy, open a word document and paste. Furthest right on the toolbar is a 'Replace with' button, in the 'Replace' section write 0 and 'Replace with' section leave blank, then hit 'Replace all'. Repeat with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. Then Replace ^p:^p (paragraph + colon + paragraph) with 1 space. And you should get a block of text minus timecodes, it sounds complicated but only takes a minute once you get the hang of it. You can then find transcription errors and replace with correct spelling, add paragraphs for sections in the talk and punctuation. It's also a really fast and free way of getting a good transcription of any video or audio you wish just by uploading to youtube, and after you've taken the steps above you can turn it into closed captions again by going to video manager > edit specific video > Subtitles CC > Create new subtitles or CC > Transcribe and auto-sync > copy the text from word doc and paste into transcription window > set timings (automatically).
Unofficial librarian of vegan and socialist movement media.
PhiloVegan Wiki: https://tinyurl.com/y7jc6kh6
Vegan Video Library: https://tinyurl.com/yb3udm8x
Ishkah YouTube: https://youtube.com/Ishkah
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Online vegan community, discussion, ways to help each other and paywalls

Post by brimstoneSalad »

H.S. Ross is everywhere!
Why won't he/she blog or something? Always such insight, lost to the oblivion of youtube comments. It's so sad. :cry:

Not sure Patreon has such features.
In my experience, it can often be more work managing details like that by hand than the payoff it provides, so I wouldn't suggest anything complicated like that.

The best rewards to encourage more contribution are those supported by the system which don't require any manual intervention.
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NonZeroSum
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Re: Online vegan community, discussion, ways to help each other and paywalls

Post by NonZeroSum »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Wed May 31, 2017 4:35 am H.S. Ross is everywhere!
Why won't he/she blog or something? Always such insight, lost to the oblivion of youtube comments. It's so sad. :cry:
Aha yea maybe they just prefer to stay in the shadows building up rapor with content producers on a friendly viewer commenting basis. You could message them insisting that it's got to the point that if they don't start producing content for public eyes you'll build a macro to search out all their comments and upload it to HSRossWatch.org jokes :lol:
Not sure Patreon has such features.
In my experience, it can often be more work managing details like that by hand than the payoff it provides, so I wouldn't suggest anything complicated like that.

The best rewards to encourage more contribution are those supported by the system which don't require any manual intervention.
I should have separated my comment into 3 parts as think it got lost in translation as it might for UV.

Firstly I said I liked the idea of setting up a patreon to give workplace solidarity when the boss (YouTube) is docking pay unfairly with no possibility of refund. It's not nice when someone is relying on that income (especially if they've just had a baby), they should be able to expect some economic stability, and its great that viewers that get something out of the show can step up and help out where the boss fails.

Given their unease with taking money from people in the past (shutting down patron) and now (for workplace solidarity), and the relatively sparse number of places where people can find good rational vegan discussion, I wondered if they would think about opening up the discussion under old 5$ 20$ posts (early video uploads and work in progress scripts) after the videos have already been released publicly and the early bird privilege is fulfilled.

Secondly I gave an example list of other ways people can publicize their channel as a good vegan educational resource "which you could simply put out there as stuff which would help publicize the work you do", not meaning as any subscription service right now, but leaving in the language of pay per month as an example if that is something UV wanted to move to in the future if YouTube collapses (as econimically viable for small DIY content producers) as others are doing like 'DeFranco Elite.' Right now just making people aware that there are a few projects which would help improve the service they can deliver and their public reach through transcribing, reviewing, academia, and publicizing, that they might like to hear about if it happened?

Thirdly I talked for ages about the difficulty in implementing community contributions on youtube and work arounds I've found useful. Concluding that it'd probably be easier to cut out the middle man of YouTube and send transcripts directly, if that were something they'd want?
Unofficial librarian of vegan and socialist movement media.
PhiloVegan Wiki: https://tinyurl.com/y7jc6kh6
Vegan Video Library: https://tinyurl.com/yb3udm8x
Ishkah YouTube: https://youtube.com/Ishkah
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