To keep your site fresh and useful, consider adding or editing these features when moderating.

 

Titles


A video title may be the only thing a user sees when deciding whether or not to watch - make sure it's descriptive and clear.

Some videos are given a default title when they're uploaded, which may be the same as the original file name. In these cases, you should add spaces and ideally contribute additional information to make the content of the video clear to someone who is unfamiliar with it.
 

Descriptions


Similarly, descriptions are often quick notes producers have written to themselves, and may not be clear to viewers.

The best descriptions give people a reason to want to watch the video, and sometimes provide context or a summary of the video's content. The description should never be the same as the title, but can add additional information.
 

If the video comes from YouTube and does not have a description at the time the video is imported, the title and other information (author, time, views, category) may be listed as the description. You should consider whether this information is useful to users, and edit it appropriately so that the title is not repeated in the description.
 

Think of the description as the teaser to get people to watch the video and offer them places to look for more information.
 

When editing descriptions, you need to add in any (approved) html you want to see, such as links - links will not be automatically recognized.
 

Note:

You need to be cautious when editing video information to stick to the original intent of a video. After all, for many videos, the title from the original site will be visible within the player, and certainly only a click away.

Work with content producers to encourage more descriptive information - it will also improve their views on the host site. If you want to offer more commentary, consider using a theme that allows for editor's notes to distinguish your comments from the original video description.

 

Tags


Think of tags as key words - the topic of a video, the subject - any important information that would help people find the video or find similar videos. On Miro Community, tags can be more than one word, and are separated by commas. However, because not all host sites share this system, you should check videos when they come in to make sure the tags aren't scrambled.
 

Let's say you have a video of the city mayor and you want the video to have as tags the mayor's name, the city, "city hall," the event name, the topic of her/his speech, etc. If the video has no pre-existing tags, just add the ones you want, using commas to separate each tag. But if the video already has some tags, you may need to edit them, because the mayor's first and last names may have imported as separate tags, which is not very useful - "Richard" won't give you a lot of relevant videos, but "Richard Daley" might.
 

Editor's Notes


Have you ever clicked to watch a video because of a comment by the person who linked to it? Many people are more likely to watch videos if they see the video recommended by someone else, especially if that recommendation gives them more context about a video, or suggests that the video is high quality. Editor's notes can fill the information gap by telling the viewer what is compelling about the video, or by giving a broader summary. This can be similar to what you would say if sending a video to a friend, or linking to it on Facebook or Twitter. Or, the editor's note can suggest additional links or related videos.
 

Sometimes videos will have a very clear description and won't really require additional explanation, but most of the time it is useful, especially for featured videos. "Why is this video being featured?" is a good question to keep in mind when writing an editor's note for featured videos.
 

Playlists


Use playlists to identify a series of videos meant to be watched one after the other. These might be episodes of a particular show, workshops from a conference, or even disparate videos about a particular topic you'd like to high-light that is too specific for a category (for example, videos for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, videos for Veteran's Day, videos from the Mayoral election race, etc.)