Church YouTube channel

YouTube is one of the most popular video sites on the internet. It boasted 20 million visitors per month in 2006, with over 10 million videos viewed every day!

The Church now has a YouTube channel. There are seven videos of Elder Ballard answering questions that are commonly asked concerning Mormonism and six clips from the Truth Restored ads that appear on mormon.org.


What do you think about this?

telfordca wrote:What do you think about this?

I think that's terrific! I hope it will broaden our media outreach.

telfordca wrote:...


What do you think about this?

What do we/I think about this?

I hope nobody in this forum is expecting any response that is anything less than wildly enthusiastic. I hope Church members take full advantage of the member-missionary opportunities we should have as a result of the recent media activities.

My only concern would be that people may not be finding the "official" videos and end up seeing something else entirely.

telfordca wrote:My only concern would be that people may not be finding the "official" videos and end up seeing something else entirely.

That's always a possibility. I'd assume anyone wanting to see official church videos would go to a church site, not YouTube. I'd think that the purpose of placing church videos on YouTube would be to expose them to people who wouldn't otherwise watch them. However, the downside is that I'm sure parody videos will pop up.

After having watched one of the video pieces starring Elder Ballard, one thing that I wondered about was the choice of a dark, basically black, background. I wondered whether the very dark background might give a less-than-favorable impression to some curious viewers.

rmrichesjr wrote:After having watched one of the video pieces starring Elder Ballard, one thing that I wondered about was the choice of a dark, basically black, background. I wondered whether the very dark background might give a less-than-favorable impression to some curious viewers.

I think that is just the lighting. They use the same thing in general conference too where more light is focused on the speaker and the camera will just remove the background.

I do remember some other videos where a couple of the 12 and some other GAs where sitting around a table explaining the doctrines, but I think that was a missionary training video. Though it might be what you are thinking of as a good background and friendly atmosphere.

One drawback is after you watch a clip on YouTube you are offered similar clips to watch. Sometimes these aren't appropriate.

cottrells wrote:One drawback is after you watch a clip on YouTube you are offered similar clips to watch. Sometimes these aren't appropriate.

I noticed some pretty inappropriate similar cliips as well..

YouTube doesn't seem an appropriate venue for this in my mind. Although video social networking is for the masses I've learned it's just not for me.

I guess it comes back to the goal of placing the clips on YouTube. If it's to be an official distribution point (particularly for members), the "related" clips creates an issue. If it's just to get the stuff "out there" where non-members will see it, then it's an acceptable "risk". If nothing else, it will help counter the negative that will be out there anyway.

One thing I'm curious about is some of the videos seem to point to newsroom rather then mormons.org. Depending on who you thing will view the video, I'd think Mormons.org might be more appropriate. Or even the broadcast sections of the lds.org since they like videos.

The related videos can go both ways too, one may be watching the inappropriate and get the church video as the related video and thus stumble upon something that gets them interested.

RussellHltn wrote:I guess it comes back to the goal of placing the clips on YouTube. If it's to be an official distribution point (particularly for members), the "related" clips creates an issue. If it's just to get the stuff "out there" where non-members will see it, then it's an acceptable "risk". If nothing else, it will help counter the negative that will be out there anyway.

One thing I'm curious about is some of the videos seem to point to newsroom rather then mormons.org. Depending on who you thing will view the video, I'd think Mormons.org might be more appropriate. Or even the broadcast sections of the lds.org since they like videos.

I'll let curriculum know of your thoughts. It's an interesting observation.

Tom

I do wonder about this. I did a couple of searches on youtube - Mormon; Mormon+truth - and all I found was antimormon and some sexual content. I only found Elder Ballard by searching Mormon+Ballard. It really is unfortunate that the legitimate videos are not on the front pages. But I do agree that if someone is searching, and ends up on Elder Ballard's video, that is a good thing. I just hope they end up there!

My thoughts are convoluted, but seem to reach a logical conclusion -

Yesterday in Sharing Time we showed the "Joy to the World" DVD to the senior primary and lost their interest about 1/2 way through. I loved it, but for the 8 and 9 year olds it was too much. At the same time I was wishing that there was a version of the video that didn't have the missionary content.

That might seem like a strange thing to say, but it reflects the point of Elder Ballard's talk in this last conference. I imagined a "teaser" version of the video that might have just the biblical account with the choir music. It would be short enough to hold anyone's interest and "mainstream" enough that many church members might feel more comfortable using it to introduce the Gospel to a friend. Then it occurred to me that the lack of specific teachings of the Restoration could defeat the missionary purpose of the video's production, which wouldn't be good.

And then . . . I imagined a youtube version - edited from the original, available online so it could be part of an e-card, and low resolution so millions of people could download it. It would be titled "Joy to the Word - the youtube edition." At the end it would have a short graphic screen that would say "The full length version video is available for free on DVD from your LDS neighbor, by visiting this web address, or by calling 1-888-537-7700.

I have friends scattered across the country who aren't ready for the discussions and probably wouldn't watch what the perceived to be a "missionary dvd," but who would watch a shorter version of "Joy to the World" on youtube.

So, one of my projects for today was to find out what the church has done so far. I arrived here.

I think that the Church having a youtube page is a good thing. Videos of Elder Ballard explaining stuff isn't a bad start, but it might be a little bit more meat than most youtube viewers are ready for. I know lifelong members of the church who can't get lost listening to him. Of course they need to be brought to that point, but intermediate steps are required. Careful spiritual nutrition requires milk before meat (see 1 Cor. 3:2; D&C 19:22).

I just posted what I imagined would be one of two messages - now it's one of three.

I was pretty surprised when my blog post was immediately visible. An open forum is a great thing, but even most newspaper blogs have some kind of buffer time where an actual person reads and approves the posting.

When it becomes public knowledge that the Church is running blog software, there will be a concentrated effort by adversarial forces to subvert and disrupt the effort. Human moderation seems indispensable. I would suggest a physically limited but technologically adept service missionary, maybe even a team of them - retired, willing, approved by local priesthood leaders and working from home with their own equipment and connectivity.

The blog software help file should have instructions on setting up "moderators" or maybe even "moderation teams."

I can think of 3 ways to defend against inappropriate side links on youtube. The first is by providing official content. The second is by using the structure of youtube search function to crowd out inappropriate links. The third way is to report inappropriate links directly to the youtube administrators.

The first and best way is to use an official channel. That way people can know for sure that their content is coming from the Church, as surely as if it were on the official web site or BYU.TV. Ideally, the official channel will be rich in content. It is my strong opinion that every church movie used by the missionaries should be on youtube in some form. I imagine people searching youtube for "life after death" or "the purpose of life" and finding a link to a low resolution online version of Man's Search for Happiness, with a graphic at the end leading to the church media referral system. It might say "If you'd like to see the complete version of this video on DVD, at no charge, please contact your Mormon neighbor, visit this website, or call this number.

The second way is more complicated, requires a greater number of active participants and is much better in that it synergizes with the first. When official media content is available, Individual members of the church need to get on youtube and re-submit the videos on their own lists. That way multiple copies of the right videos would show up when people search. Try searching for "laughing babies." Seven of the top twenty hits are the same video. If thousands of church members each had personal postings of their favorite church videos, the adversarial videos would be crowded to the fringes, especially if the titles of the Church videos were "optimized" for search engine placement. The challenge of this approach is that it lets a cat out the bag. Putting the church films online, even in low resolution format, creates the possibility of misuse. I think the risk is worth the reward. The adversarial forces of the world can get DVD's from distribution and certainly have the technological capability of misusing them, but the nature of the Church curriculum seems to prevent it. Put briefly, the "anti" crowd doesn't use correlated materials. Searching youtube on the word "Mormon" returns only a single correlated video. The rest is largely antagonistic and misleading.

Thirdly - a rigorous effort should be made to report "key word" abuse to the youtube administrators. This could be a job for a retired couple working from home. It could also be a widespread effort on the part of church members who use youtube. Some kinds of false search return are inevitable. If you search youtube for "stake growth," for example, you get about fifteen "hits." Of those, six are the video, one is a self posted video by an Australian LDS stake about personal growth at an MTC activity, and the rest videos that have the word "stake and growth" in their title. Google works like that and the administrators aren't likely to prevent those kinds of search returns. The kind of return they will prevent is videos that have nothing to do with the church and use church search words to misdirect traffic.

Here's a recap. 1 - The Church new media presence needs a massive influx of content. The church has the content already developed. It just needs to make it available online. 2 - Individual members should be able to repost videos so that antagonistic materials receive fewer "search hits." 3 - misleading search results should be reported to system administrators.

VN

Jeremy wrote:I do wonder about this. I did a couple of searches on youtube - Mormon; Mormon+truth - and all I found was antimormon and some sexual content. I only found Elder Ballard by searching Mormon+Ballard. It really is unfortunate that the legitimate videos are not on the front pages. But I do agree that if someone is searching, and ends up on Elder Ballard's video, that is a good thing. I just hope they end up there!

One reason the anti-Mormon crowd gets good search returns is that the Church is very careful to use official names for things. For example, the Church prefers that the official name of the church be used, and asks news and other media outlets to use the official name. They mostly do.

Antagonists, on the other hand, don't care. They use whatever words will bring internet searches to their content. To paraphrase one of the favorite film strips of my youth, these shady characters need to be crowded out. Some main methods are discussed in the other posts I wrote this morning, but search friendly keywords have to be part of any effort. The key words should be part of the video title.

Victor Neves wrote:I just posted what I imagined would be one of two messages - now it's one of three.

I was pretty surprised when my blog post was immediately visible. An open forum is a great thing, but even most newspaper blogs have some kind of buffer time where an actual person reads and approves the posting.

When it becomes public knowledge that the Church is running blog software, there will be a concentrated effort by adversarial forces to subvert and disrupt the effort. Human moderation seems indispensable. I would suggest a physically limited but technologically adept service missionary, maybe even a team of them - retired, willing, approved by local priesthood leaders and working from home with their own equipment and connectivity.

The blog software help file should have instructions on setting up "moderators" or maybe even "moderation teams."

We have a team of church employee and non-church employee moderators who help us keep these forums open and clean. We have, from time to time, had spammers attack but our team does a fantastic job of keeping the forums clean. It is imperative that these forums stay clean AND stay open without up front moderation. If you are a ward clerk and have a question you would like answered you don't want to post a question and have to wait possibly days for your question to be approved, an answer to be generated and approved. The real time nature feeds the community.

We do watch these forums closely. The community is the key. Thanks to all of you who help by notifying us of inappropriate posts, and who help moderate. This forum would not be a success without your dedicated efforts.

Tom

Victor Neves wrote:I imagined a "teaser" version of the video that might have just the biblical account with the choir music. It would be short enough to hold anyone's interest and "mainstream" enough that many church members might feel more comfortable using it to introduce the Gospel to a friend.

The Church does have a shortened version they did years ago called Luke II that sounds exactly like you are describing. Maybe they could put this out on YouTube.

Perhaps this should be a separate thread, but this discussion makes me wonder what the Church's view is on individual members uploading Church-produced videos such as The Nativity in its original (http://youtube.com/watch?v=nUm4KwH3Aww&feature=related) or a mash-up (http://youtube.com/watch?v=0b9yDVsz6_A) format?

I've seen general conference addresses, clips from Joy to the World, Special Witnesses of Christ, the First Vision, Sunday School videos etc. posted on YouTube. This doesn't include the numerous musical montages that I've seen using church-themed art (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksfSyQgGSQI).

It seems that grass-roots uploading of church content could help balance out the content available on YouTube about the Church without putting an undue burden on employees at Church Headquarters. However, it seems such efforts are in direct violation of Church copyright.

I know this forum isn't suppose to be used as a discussion concerning Church policy. I'm just wondering 1) what the Church policy is, and 2) if it would be feasible to have a project in which individual members could help by taking the time to digitize and upload Church-produced content in a way that would be sanctioned by the Church.

Any thoughts?

That is indeed one of the best ideas ever although it is a bit risky since there will always be haters in YouTube and anywhere else. But I'm sure having a YouTube Channel can help.

Aaron wrote:I'm just wondering 1) what the Church policy is, and 2) if it would be feasible to have a project in which individual members could help by taking the time to digitize and upload Church-produced content in a way that would be sanctioned by the Church.

Any thoughts?

Here is the link to the Church's Website Rights and Use Policy. You could also email the Intellectual Property Office (their email address is on the link).

I would think that with Elder Ballard's encouragement to use the Internet to share the Gospel, the IP Office might be more open to the idea...

A couple of different things came together for me on this subject over the weekend. Both have to do with our culture of obedience.

I downloaded "Myths and Legends" from the Church site, intending to share it on youtube, using keyword rich descriptors, but then didn't. It occurred to me that I might lack permission until I reread the article to make sure I had permission - just now. I reread again to make sure that I had things right, then went ahead and posted it. Maybe the language could state things in a more "express permission" kind of way.
On another front, my sister has created a blog consisting mostly of letters from family members we have serving on missions. http://steadfastfaithinchrist.blogspot.com/

When our oldest sister saw it she sent the following advice -
[INDENT]Also, I think it would be good to have some kind of disclaimer, such as "This site is maintained by Penny Freeman for descendants of Glen Tarbet and Gloria Gay Neves, who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as "Mormons." This site is completely independent and has no connection with official sites of the Church. Links to official sites are provided for easy reference only. If you have questions or concerns about doctrines of the church, please contact your local missionaries or local unit leaders. These contact numbers may be found at: (site on lds.org).
[/INDENT] So, we're that kind of family, but I don't think we're enormously different from a lot of people who want to share the gospel online. We want to make sure we stay within the order of things. It seems important for the Church communications people to understand our general reticence and help feel like we have permission to sharing information in this arena.