3

On the main site, you can find a post I've written. Let me first summarize it and analyze it, and then ask you about it.

Summary and initial analysis of my post on the main site

YouTube offers a little-known service called "YouTube Kids". This service consists of a website, an iOS app, and an Android app. The service is targeted to kids 12 and under. It tries not to let them see inappropriate videos. It doesn't always succeed, but it still does better than the regular YouTube app.

The problem: On the website and in the Android app, I've found, autoplay is always on, and there's no way to disable it. After one video ends, the next starts right away. This is problematic, for various reasons.

Really, I have two questions:

  • A) In the iOS app, if there's any way to disable autoplay, how can I do so?

  • B) On the website, and in the Android app, perhaps there's some way to disable autoplay which I somehow missed. If so: What is this method of disabling autoplay?

But, in practice, on the main site, I've folded both of my questions into one:

  • How can I disable the YouTube Kids autoplay feature, on iOS or on any other platform?

I've posed that one single question in my post on the main site.

More analysis

My post on the main site is really partially a cross-platform question. It's asking:

  • A) How can I do what I want on iOS?

  • B) If I can't do what I want on iOS: How can I do what I want on another platform?

I looked at help/on-topic. It looks like like question A is definitely on-topic. It's unclear to me whether question B is on-topic or not.

My two meta questions

Question 1. Is question B also on-topic?

Question 2. In the end, should my entire post on the main site remain open or closed?

Edit

Allan kindly heavily edited my original post. I'm not sure that this meta question is still applicable. If it's not, maybe we should close it.

2
  • 1
    Thanks for bringing this here! It’s way one the “too involved” side for my tastes but I need to give it some thought before suggesting some edits or how many posts might be needed to have ideal / single question. I really think there are two if not more on topic items so I’ll help as I can to get them sorted if the community can’t lend a quick answer.
    – bmike Mod
    Dec 31, 2019 at 0:03
  • @Allan did all the heavy lifting on the question already, and added a good explanation here on the changes he made to it (and I fully agree with that). The whole thing is a good example for the edit process at works, which makes the meta question worthwhile to keep. Anybody interested in how shared editing can help to improve a question can have a look at the edit history to learn :-)
    – nohillside Mod
    Dec 31, 2019 at 13:04

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3

Just throwing in my 2¢ so there can be a clear understanding of my reasoning for the initial close vote, the subsequent editing and the close retraction.

There was two main problems with the question: excessive narrative and too broad a scope such that the question wasn’t about Apple products per se, but rather a customer service issue seeing that YouTube has this issue across the board. In other words, if YouTube failed to implement the feature everywhere, there’s nothing we can do and the issue belongs in YouTube’s court.

The goal of my edit was two fold: narrow the scope to Apple products, in this case iOS and to reduce the narrative to an easier to digest question. Short, to the point questions with focused, relevant details tend to attract more views and consequently, more answers. Keeping the question focused on Apple and iOS is in keeping with the norms of this site; relevancy to Apple And one topic per question.

It was a very substantive edit, so I sought permission prior to the edit. The OP rolled back some of the changes, but kept it within scope. Though the narrative and structure was a bit extensive for my tastes, I don’t like to tread on people’s style. As such, I retracted my close vote: it’s a good question and belongs on the site.

Should the original post be on this site? No. The it is too broad and outside the scope of this site

Should the edited post remain? Absolutely. Again, it’s a good question and is now narrow enough to be on topic.

Suggestion: you could replace “iOS” with “Android” and re-ask in the Android site.

2
  • 1
    Thank you for the suggestion! I tried it on Android already. It looks like there's probably no easy way to disable autoplay, on any platform. My next step might be to look into the best way to contact Google with a feature request (to add an autoplay toggle).
    – tealhill supports Monica
    Dec 31, 2019 at 15:45
  • Allan - that question is struggling as you noted, let’s try has answer at least one portion of it before it gets more close votes.
    – bmike Mod
    Jan 2, 2020 at 0:34
1

Just to reiterate, this isn’t really a good question as shown by how many comments it has generated and no answers whatsoever. Let’s get up some answers to the question or close it in favor of a much narrower scoped question.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .