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A lot of computer graphics is animated, so I'd expect that many questions and answers will benefit from actually having an animation included in the post. Of course, sometimes a GIF might do, but more often than not we probably want decent (and maybe longer) videos, so I think linking to YouTube will be fairly common (and the very first question already did).

We know from Arqade and some other SE sites, that YouTube embedding is an existing feature that just needs to be activated for a site. You can see it in action here.

If the community agrees that this would be beneficial for this site, we could ask the devs to activate it here as well.

Do we want YouTube embedding?

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I think we should make the decision about YouTube embedding independently of any other features like MathJax. From a technical point of view, YouTube embedding isn't really "expensive" the way that MathJax is, because the conversion of a link into a player happens on the server and doesn't require SE to deliver loads of JavaScript with every single page request. I think from SE's point of view YouTube embedding (as well as SoundCloud embedding, btw) are the less problematic features.

If activating all of the extra features we're interested in is a problem, I'm sure the devs will tell us. So I don't think there's much point in not asking for it just because we're afraid of asking for too much. If we don't ask, we won't know.

So let's ignore any other feature requests we're interested in. Would YouTube embeddings be useful to us? I'd say yes, they'd be very useful. There will be questions about how to achieve certain graphical effects, and there's only so much words can do to explain what exact effect that is. Showing an actual video of it would be much more expressive. This applies to both questions and answers. So I'm fairly certain that we will regularly use YouTube videos to make our points... so why have people load YouTube and leave the site to watch the video, if they could just watch it right there in the browser?

And regarding

It encourages questions of the kind how do i do this that do not always work out as valuable contribution.

I don't think so. If someone wants to ask a bad "how can I do X, plz give me teh codez" question, they'll do it with or without an embedded video. However, there could also be great questions requiring videos (think "I'm trying to achieve this diorama effect. I've attempted X, Y and Z, but I just can't the depth of field to do it's magic. What am I doing wrong?"), and making it easier for those kinds of questions seems like a great opportunity for this community.

What I'm saying is, we'll have to watch the quality of our questions either way. This feature is going to encourage "video-only questions" as much as having code blocks encourages "code-only answers". SE is a great platform for building high-quality content, and having YouTube embeds will in no way torpedo that mission.

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    $\begingroup$ Still, an embedded YouTube video is still pretty much a link that could die away. So if YouTube embedding is going to be enabled, we definitely have to make sure that the essence of information is existent in the mere words of the question, too. We certainly don't want to get nor encourage video-only answers either. $\endgroup$
    – Christian Rau
    Commented Aug 5, 2015 at 22:31
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    $\begingroup$ @ChristianRau Of course not. My point is that I predict that we'll get the YouTube links either way, so we might as well show them. Ensuring post quality and self-containedness is an entirely orthogonal issue to that (in my opinion). $\endgroup$
    – Martin Ender
    Commented Aug 5, 2015 at 22:36
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No, not really. It encourages questions of the kind how do i do this that do not always work out as valuable contribution. I see something like webgl integration as much more useful. Tough link to a test suffices in my opinion.

Adding a lot of features builds up bloat, and certainly asking for stuff has a cost. So i would be more in favour of asking for Latex support, as much more useful for the community and post reading than quick you tube integration (Google tracking integration :).

So while i dont really object super much i think it may be unnecessary.

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    $\begingroup$ Not sure how webgl integration is much more useful, that's not the bread and butter of computer graphics and probably accounts only for a very minor part of demoable code. Would be cool though, but not as a replacement for youtube embedding. $\endgroup$
    – teh internets is made of catz
    Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 19:13
  • $\begingroup$ @tehinternetsismadeofcatz ok so what about LATEX? it was more of a absurd example $\endgroup$
    – joojaa
    Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 19:17
  • $\begingroup$ Being discussed here $\endgroup$
    – teh internets is made of catz
    Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 19:17
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Yes. How better can you demonstrate a graphic effect or make a qualitative comparison? Some good examples would be animation, IK, shaders, etc. I feel like this is obvious.

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