What to do about duplicate videos?

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So one of the issues raised during our chat yesterday was the issue of duplicate content. This is a result of presenters who speak at more than open WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. using the same presentation. Why this happens is understandable (great information should be shared widely after all) but for us this presents a challenge: As our catalog of videos expands, duplicate content gets in the way of new and unique content.

There is no existing guidelines on this matter, so let’s all get our heads together and discuss how we can reduce the amont of duplicate content on the site in a way that preserves quality content, and is fair to presenters and WordCamp organizers.

Please share your thoughts in the comments. 🙂

AJ Morris 9:31 pm on February 1, 2013

RE: Tony and Dre: Im ok with duplicate presentations, especially since at least in this case they are from 2 different people (that happen to own a company together). It would be interesting to know if people would find one video over the other all the time, or if it really hurts having multiple videos with the same content.
Chandra Maharzan 4:12 am on February 2, 2013

I am okay with duplicate contents unless the person is different and has no credits. Since they happen on different WordCamps, it shouldn’t matter. In case of same person giving same presentation on the same WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more., we will need to check the best (latest perhaps) and remove the older one.
Jerry Bates 6:29 am on February 2, 2013

I’ll play devil’s advocate and say that I think duplicates are something we should avoid. I think it’s better if we’re known for having “only the best content” instead of “all the content” when it comes to WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. videos.

I know this would not be a popular choice with speakers, but having many copies of the same talk is not a good thing, and ideally it should be our responsibility as curators to determine which one is the best, and remove the duplicates.
- AJ Morris 12:50 am on February 5, 2013
  
  Being that the presentations can’t be the same conference, how is it fair to the attendees that went to a conference and come here expecting to find someone’s talk, only to not see it and find one from someone else? Sure, in this instance they used the same slides, but how would I know as an attendee know that the speaker is now someone different but the presentation is the same?
  
  I agree that we should be curators, but where do you see making sure that conference attendees are also thought about?
  - Jerry Bates 1:06 am on February 5, 2013
    
    Yep, totally agree… we’ll look to archive rather than delete. I was just taking the extreme view to keep the argument going. 🙂
philerb 8:33 pm on February 2, 2013

What about a way of archiving the older versions? As we’ve talked about previously, sometimes folks are looking for that video from a particular WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. or the speaker mentioned that one cool tool only in that version.

Maybe make them not show up in a generic search, buy show up when searching for the speaker, location, etc.

Maybe with a way to link to the newer version(s)? Make that prominent so folks know there’s another version.

This is probably a bigger wishlist item, but, just a thought for the best of both.
- Jerry Bates 9:02 pm on February 2, 2013
  
  I actually like that approach. I don’t thing any of us enjoy outright deleting content from the site, especially after it has been published. I also agree that some visitors prefer to watch the talk they attended, and not just the same talk given elsewhere, perhaps for the Q&A at the end, which is never the same from presentation to presentation. Both of these are good reasons to archive and not remove content.
  
  Not sure what we can do about search results, though it’s a good idea. Same with linking to a “canonical” video, which might entail a lot of work unless we can automate. We may want to add these to the Wishlist…
  
  Any other ideas about how to effectively archive duplicate content? I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
- Aditya Jain 5:09 pm on February 3, 2013
  
  This would be awesome!

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