What could technichally block this feature ? Federation ?
Yes, we can create a new account or a new channel and transfer each video to the new channel / owner, but we lost all followers for channels and all subcriptions for an account. Plus we can’t group that action for several videos.
Naming URLs can be an issue for creators who change their names (in case of civil state changes if they use their legal name, for example trans/non-binary people are deeply concerned).
I think this is a feature I can try to develop, would you have any advise where I could start ?
Yes, this would break federation, unless we keep the previous url as a redirection to the new one.
We could go back to the old system: only UUID in the urls
Joke aside, urls are a scarce ressource and renaming should be limited in frequency/number of times without prior admin approval.
How¹ are you going to keep track of the channel/account name history? Since we need to know the previous url names to properly redirect to the last url-name, that implies a change of model, where right now an actor has a single url-name.
Yet. That could be another improvement. It would somehow lessen the need for a url-name change, right? Plus that would benefit beyond the scope of the current issue, and be more straightforward to implement.
We could go back to the old system: only UUID in the urls
But really, I think this is the solution, beautiful URL are not so used, and when this feature has come on YouTube, it has allowed several trans / nb people concerned to change their name without destroying their own channel.
Yet. That could be another improvement. It would somehow lessen the need for a url-name change, right? Plus that would benefit beyond the scope of the current issue, and be more straightforward to implement.
This one can be acceptable but not so fair because subscribers are lost. I could be wrong but transfering subscribers could be a nightmare too ?
Yes, transfering subscribers between accounts/channels is not possible.
I am just suggesting adding support for grouped video transfers would be an easy first fix because you used the lack of group action for video transfers as an argument for supporting url-name change. I don’t mean it is enough nor equivalent to solve the problem of existing names needing change, of course.
Yes, this would break federation, unless we keep the previous url as a redirection to the new one.
We could go back to the old system: only UUID in the urls
~1. Maybe we can let the user choose between UUID or channel name (one is possible) ?
This way, the redirection on others instances could be transparent ? I mean « old channel name » should be hidden in the url.~
Add a field Channel name in admin create user form
Add the ability to change the channel owner, this way, a group of video could transfered
