Karl,
You state that the center column is for keeping up with subscriptions. We're telling you that might be the intent, but it's useless for that purpose. It's like us telling you I need a car to get from point A to point B. If you provide a bicycle, a motorbike, a horse, rollerblades, we'd say, not as good, but they will get me from A to B. You're providing a rowboat with one oar, and there's no water between points A and B.
Another user up here mentioned email as an analogy to the center column, but they didn't take it far enough. Let me try. Imagine your email account:
1. Everything you get comes into your inbox.
2. Your inbox only shows you 20 messages at a time. For more, you have to scroll to the bottom and click 'More' and visually scan the subject line until you think you've found the one you're looking for.
3. There are no read/unread indicators. All emails have the same attributes whether you've read them or not and whether you've responded to them or not. You'll just have to have a good memory to know which is which.
4. You can't delete any emails.
5. You can't move any emails out of your inbox.
6. You can't put your emails into any kind of order. They show up as they arrived.
7. You can't search your inbox, you can only search a combination of your inbox and all other inboxes. There's no way to determine from that search which mail is yours.
Does that sound like a winning email package? That's the center column.
You state that you don't provide an 'x' because some people wouldn't want to use it. Where do you see anyone suggesting that the use of the 'x' be required? Providing it as an option is just that, an option. Those people who prefer a different experience would never be forced to remove videos. (BTW, the better design is still the way it used to be, showing unviewed videos, grouped by channel).
I subscribe to fewer than 20 channels. I dumped about 1/3 of my subscriptions as soon as this new homepage was put out because with this design, there's no way I could figure out what I have or haven't seen, or manage that in any way. I can't begin to imagine what it's like for people with >20 subscriptions, or if those channels put out many videos day/week.
I don't know about other people, but I don't watch all new videos the second they come out. I have unwatched videos going back weeks, sometimes months - that I know I want to get to eventually. It's a matter of finding the time and being in the right mood watch those particular videos. The center column is worthless for that.
One of the first posts I made back in Dec regarding the new design is that you're trying to cram way too much stuff into way too small of a space. The answer from youtube has been, 'Let's cram even more stuff into it! Then, you're sure to love it!'
One of the things that I really liked about the Google search engine (way back when it actually worked), was the clean landing page. Unlike Yahoo, which had decided to make itself into a portal by cramming every available pixel with content overwhelming the user, Google stayed clean and let the user decide. YahooTube anyone?.
Most of what you addressed in this latest post is actually directed at my post, however at this point I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall. It's not because you aren't immediately changing the design, it's that you keep defending it with bogus arguments.
As for the Uploads Only bug:
FF 6.0.2
OS X 10.7.3
(No upgrading FF until they fix a bug or 3 due out in FF 11 - don't get me started on their idiotic 'rapid development' process).
Cookies are allowed and are not cleared. All scripts are allowed.
I don't have to close the browser to make this happen. On the home page I click on a channel. Click on the Uploads Only 'button', click on a different channel, then click back to the first one and it's reset back to All Activity immediately. I actually don't care too much about this 'bug' because I don't use channels in this way. Unless you start showing the number of unviewed videos on each channel tab (as I suggested in an earlier post), I won't ever use this 'feature'. It's useless to me.
BTW, this shouldn't be a cookie setting anyway. It should be stored in the user profile - easier to manage, consistency across systems and browsers...