To Claim Or Not To Claim, Therein Lies The Vexation (or the one about Legacy Linking)

This is about legacy YouTube accounts, those which were created before May 2009 and which have not been linked to Google Accounts.  Which means that these legacy YouTube accounts cannot have been used sine 10th January 2011 as it became mandatory for all legacy YouTube accounts to be linked to Google Accounts in order to be sign in-able.

But first of all, in order to really get to grips with this topic we need to address what IS "legacy"?

The dictionary defines it as:

noun, plural legacies.

1.

Law. a gift of property, especially personal property, as money, by will; a bequest.

2.

anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor:

the legacy of ancient Rome.

3.

an applicant to or student at a school that was attended by his or her parent.

4.

Obsolete. the office, function, or commission of a legate.

adjective

5.

of or relating to old or outdated computer hardware, software, or data that, while still functional, does not work well with up-to-date systems.

For us the relevant bit is "obsolete" and relating to old site functionality which is not supported.

OK, now that I have that out of the way with-  YouTube channels which were created before May 2009 and which have not been linked to Google Accounts yet do exist, although they are increasingly rare.

Google have owned YouTube since late 2006, allowed the creation of YouTube accounts under the legacy system until May 2009 and thereafter ran two systems in tandem-  their YouTube channels on Google Accounts and legacy YouTube accounts not on Google Accounts.

Until, that is, the 11th of January 2011.  From that day onward Google have required that users with legacy YouTube accounts to link them to Google Accounts and use the same system as anyone who created their YouTube channel from May 2009 onward.

And then at the end of that year Google announced the purging of unclaimed legacy YouTube accounts.  But unclaimed legacy YouTube accounts were only those which were never actually used under any system, not even the legacy one.  These unclaimed legacy YouTube accounts had no uploads, no one had ever really signed into them at all.

By January 2012 there were only YouTube channels and non-linked legacy YouTube accounts which had uploads.

Signing in was possible with the custom URL (aka YouTube username) until 2013 when Google realised that the security risk of publicly known "usernames" was causing problems on a crazy scale and required everyone, even YouTubers, to use their Google Accounts' usernames, ie the email addresses these Google Accounts use.  Problems arose for YouTubers who didn't realise that they even had a Google Account involved and that it used the email address as its username.  This is not that important except to inform why this is such a problem for users:



This is the information about the Gaia linking process for those users who really do still have these rare non-linked legacy YouTube accounts which they need to know their legacy YouTube username for and the legacy YouTube password in order to use the Gaia link.

Because the information is outdated (it looks at the linking process from about three years ago) and misleading/confusing (it uses contradictory and conflicting terms) it causes problems for users with these rate non-linked legacy YouTube accounts.

The Gaia link just doesn't look like this anymore.

The current link itself is flawed because explain that if you don't have your legacy password (it is assumed you at least know your legacy YouTube username) you must know/be able to use the legacy email address as a Google Account's email address username.  And it has a completely useless link for loss of access as that is for a Google Account, not a legacy YouTube account.

I have made a video about my many issues with the Help Centre article which I have reported to Google time and time again.  I am hoping that it will be addressed as a matter of urgency.  The one incorrect bit of information about the Google Account to link to needing to not have a YouTube channel on it already has, I note, been removed.  But it is not enough-  the article needs to be rewritten from the bottom up.