I think it depends on the learning style the user has to large degree. When I first starting learning Linux some years ago now, I don't honestly remember reading a lot of manual pages. I'm not sure I even knew they existed when I first started using Linux. So for me it's quite the opposite; I learned by "doing stuff", then later on starting reading the manual pages to find out very specific things that I could not learn visually. I find the best way I learn is visually rather than just trying to understand solely by "reading about it".

From I what I've learnt through my own learning style is that, two of the four primary types of "learners" are the "auditory learner" and the "visual learner" - I'm very much a "visual learner". So I think maybe half the problem is finding out what learning style works best for you, as you can learn a lot from that alone. Once you know what style works best for you, you can generally pick up things a lot easier. Personally, I don't think the "syntax" is particularly difficult to learn, but if one doesn't know what it means, what's actually happening/what "it" actually "does", then you'll likely be "pissing in the wind, hoping it lands in the right place" so to speak.

Yes, but I've dipped into several of your programming threads and it seems to me that you are trying to do too many new things at once. You feel that you are exploring, "doing stuff", but actually the things you are doing interfere with each other and prevent you from understanding where you are going wrong. A more step-by-step approach might yield dividends.

I think it comes down to separating the wheat from the chaff.
Not only on YT.
That's a "new" skill required to get by in the information age.
I think that's where we should help newbies more (to help themselves).
What's the point in saying "Just Google It" when you don't say what they should search for, and preferably also point out the good search results.

Another reason to refrain from using google because it will show diffirent results to each - google search links are not shareable.

So here's the meat in the sandwich. How do reasonably intelligent people who know very little about Linux evaluate YouTube videos that purport to show them how to do things? How do they know who to trust? What is the equivalent of Onebuck's instinctive evaluation of people who claim mechanical skills? If this thread can evolve in the direction of good advice on that, I'd be happy to incorporate it into a blog.

As the second sentence here shows, I think it has fairly little to do with technical/Linux skills, and very much with everyday life skills.
How do you recognize that the person who made that video probably is an idiot, and therefore their opinion/advice probably isn't worth much either?
I think that's a skill to be aquired independent of Linux skills.
It's another of those basic things they never teach at school...

It'd be a daunting, but worthy, task to do it correctly. Simple heuristics tend to fall short and in that way the methodology currently taught to kids in at least several countries is actually counterproductive.

A few decades back, during the era of exponential growth of the WWW, there were a lot of coordinated efforts to teach source evaluation more widely. Those have mostly disappeared while at the same time the landscape has gone from sloppy to wicked and malevolent. Those older resources on evaluation would still be of more value than many currend day ones. There is even more print material from the pre-web days, if and only if your local library has not burned them. The rampant book burning is another topic for another day though.

So if you have the interest to dig into such a large task, the results would be of value.

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I think this is the "service" that many of the big players are trying to provide.
Yes, it would be an important skill to teach in schools.
I actually listened to a news radio podcast recently where a bunch of German journalists go into schools and do precisely that.

AFAIK they do teach this in university, where it's absolutely crucial to writing theses and such.

If someone is reasonably intelligent, then I'd assume they know enough to use caution with any online videos. I'd guess they'd have to look at comments that hopefully others have shared to the quality of the resource. Is there LQ channel yet? Guess most of us here are text based still.

Last year I was having an overdue cleanout. Found some grossly oudated texts - far too old to risk giving to the opp shop (good will in the US?). Their best use really was fuel for heating.

Except that I couldn't, so they're still cluttering up my work area.