Change is coming to YouTube’s help community

Things are looking a little different in YouTube‘s Help Community.

“This forum has always been a place for users and creators to discuss YouTube with each other, and share tips and ideas to help each other get the most out of YouTube products and services,” Natasha, a member of Team YouTube, said in an update posted to the forum. “Unfortunately, many threads are not relevant for user-based discussion and a large amount of questions go unanswered.”

Because of this, YouTube has decided to freeze all user posting indefinitely. That means users won’t be able to create new threads, and they also won’t be able to post comments on previously created threads, or on new threads posted by Team YouTube.

YouTube says this change is part of “improvements to this YouTube English forum, including running a few experiments to help us better understand and improve the forum experience.”

Experiments will be running “over the next several months.”

Along with disabling user posting, YouTube plans to make changes to the Help Community’s homepage, “including the category boards and how threads are organized.”

The Help Community’s central hub has historically been a little chaotic, with a section for Featured Posts (aka threads pinned by Team YouTube—usually new product announcements from the team), a section for Trending Posts (which seems to be based on view and/or comment traffic), and a directory of common topics.

YouTube didn’t say how the new homepage will be changed.

Natasha did say that Team YouTube will continue using the Help Community as it always has—to “continue to share official news from YouTube about new product features, known issues, and other trending feedback or support topics.”

But, at least for now, users won’t be part of the discussion.

One final important note: Natasha specifies that these changes only apply to the English-language version of the Help Community.

“There are no changes to other YouTube forums in other languages or for specific products, as those separate forums are experiencing quality user questions and user-based discussion, with the large majority of forum threads getting answers or comments in a timely manner,” she says.