Youtu.be links next to topic titles - how?

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

Hi everyone.

This is probably really obvious but I’ve searched and searched and can’t find the answer.

Every topic here has a Youtube video in the first post. What causes some of the topics to have a ‘youtu.be’ link next to them and the bulk of them not!?

Is this a setting on the video itself, rather than something in Discourse?!

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Create a new topic, paste the link in as the title.

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

Posting a URL in the topic title would have never occurred to me!

Thanks Jeff

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

Having thought about it some more, is there a reason all topics with a youtube video in the first post don’t have that ‘youtu.be’ link presented next to them?

We have several hundred topics in our ‘videos’ category and only four have this ‘youtu.be’ link visible

[Falco]

@Richie

Having thought about it some more, is there a reason all topics with a youtube video in the first post don’t have that ‘youtu.be’ link presented next to them?

Yes.

When a topic is mainly about a link, you can paste it on the title and make the link more prominent in the UI.

That said, many topics have links (or multiple videos) in the OP and no need to highlight one in particular.

[Stephen]

@Richie

Having thought about it some more, is there a reason all topics with a youtube video in the first post don’t have that ‘youtu.be’ link presented next to them?

The link takes the user off-site, so having them there isn’t always helpful - after all it takes focus away from the community, rather than encouraging them to watch the video via an embed.

Usually communities share such links to discuss them, which makes the embed preferable. If anything there’s a case for an option to not link off-site to things which can be embedded locally.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

@Richie

Posting a URL in the topic title would have never occurred to me!

Really? Because it says so right in the topic creation form…

Of course, users never read any words on the screen, as we well know. No need to prove a point that’s been proven zillions of times.

This is a “reddit-alike” feature, to make it easy to start a topic along the lines of

Holy cow! Did y’all see this crazy article on this crazy website?!

Try going to reddit and ‘starting a topic’ – they’re usually based on links from other sites. This way it’s faster to start a new topic with just a link.

[Richie (Richie Rich)]

@Falco

That said, many topics have links (or multiple videos) in the OP and no need to highlight one in particular.

Yes, very good point, every single topic in our Videos category would have the highlight otherwise - not much point in doing that really

@Stephen

Usually communities share such links to discuss them, which makes the embed preferable. If anything there’s a case for an option to not link off-site to things which can be embedded locally.

Agreed - especially in our use case

@codinghorror

Of course, users never read any words on the screen , as we well know.

Amen to that my brother

Thanks for the link too, interesting that fourteen years after your blog post every word still stands true today