Over the weekend Al Jazeera English asked YouTubbers — through its Washington, DC based anchor Ghida Fakhry — for feedback about the channel via video responses. As of this posting 34 responses from 30 people are posted.  

While I applaud the channel for sparking such interaction, there's some risk on having viewers participate in a third party venue.  By using YouTube, Al Jazeera has little control over how other people respond to the submitted videos.  Like any other on-line forum, those who comment on YouTube videos aren't always that polite.  YouTube veterans know this and deal with it by not allowing or moderating comments (or simply not caring), but a novice may not understand this reality.

Hopefully, someone whose first submission to YouTube is a response to Fakhry's question is received respectfully by the site's community.  If not, that person may feel burned and upset that they subjected themselves to the incivility that is unfortunately common on the Internet.  If Al Jazeera English hosted this activity on its own site, then it could better manage the comments that people leave for the videos.  In that way the channel can better protect the community that it is trying to form through this outreach.

Having said that, I think Al Jazeera English on YouTube is great.  This partnership has enabled the channel to expose its content in a forum that is well known throughout the world (particularly in the USA where it has very little carriage).  At the same time, the channel has avoided investing more into its own website to handle video.  A wise move now, but if it hopes to compete better with the BBCs and CNNs of the world, its site will need video capabilities.