YouTube updates comments system

After much criticism of its recently-changed system of adding and managing comments on videos – not least the immensely irritating requirement for a Google+ account, and the mysterious way some comments were apparently un-deletable or un-approvable – YouTube has “fast tracked” (so they say) a new system to address the management issue.

Now, instead of having to painstakingly muck about with the Google+ notifications bar and going into each video to approve comments or otherwise, channel owners can simply click on the “Community” link on the left of the page and deal with all their comments there.

Ready subdivided into Published, Pending, and Spam categories (the latter automatically catching potentially junk comments for you), it’s now a matter of a few clicks to approve or delete messages.

At the moment you still need to go to the individual video page and find the comment in order to reply to it, which can take a frustrating few seconds to appear after approval, but YouTube says inline replies on the Community page will be added soon.

Not soon enough, we think…