Special:Badtitle/NS90:Forum:Wiki Updates/We now have the Widgets extension for adding embedded audio and video!/reply (3)

Some stuff have low obvious usefulness, while having obvious misuses. Such as pointlessly enthusiastic sticking it everywhere just because it's available (which is what Questionable Sanity seems to be doing now, but it's a fairly common problem).

(answered to wrong thread the first time - my bad) > I agree Youtube embeds should not completely replace all illustrations, but if it does a better job of illustrating a trope, I don't see the issue.

It cannot do a better - or even equal - job of illustrating a page. Because an embedded video must have either:
 * 1) Irrelevant or badly visible preview picture (which is worse than a relevant static pic).
 * 2) Preview picture which on its own would be good as a static pic. Since it also got overlay with controls glued on top and borders around, it's not as good nor as compact as a static pic with link (the user have to click on either) would be.
 * 3) Autostart (gah!).

In addition, it may be of the wrong size either for page layout or for playing, which aren't always the same - and when not, it's a no-win Morton's Fork. Not necessarily, but since YouTube provides different resolutions, this pitfall will be open more often than not.

Also, even the preview pic is visible at all only if the user loads YouTube automatically without question. Which practically means: "turn Google tracking on, or don't have illustrations on this wiki". Is this the desirable result?