In respect to the Seven Years War video, with the exception of a single misfact about the Louisiana Purchase, I am shock to say that it's rather... accurate and probably better than most of it's type. Of course I take exception with his limitation on the information about the Continental aspect of the war since this is where the Prussian existence was both solidified but also placed Prussia into being more than just a regional power.

As for the French Revolution... up until he talks about the Holy Roman Empire, he's rather correct. The HRE was very much still an entity, but a very vague and complicated union of states that was very much controlled by the Habsburgs. Also, Louis was very much against the idea of war and certainly wasn't going to want to go to war with his fellow monarchs by invading the Austrian Netherlands (not Austria). NAPOLEON WAS ALSO NOT A CORPORAL. Now, he is right about how the Terror led to a more wealth based government, the Directory was effectively existing to fill the pockets of the Directors (particularly Barras) and actively focused on the wars in order to keep public attention away from home. He doesn't really go much into Napoleon's government, which is complicated because it is very much focused in Napoleon but still pushing the ideals of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

I'm a little shocked, he does it rather well for a semi-pop history YouTube video. Of course there are much more nuances that he can't get into but... he does it well enough for me to pass it.

Certainly some value in the series but I think that's going to be covered enough in this thread, not really much criticism from past threads when (IMO) there is plenty to be had. I think there is a pretty low standard for it because its short and any attention given to history that's not horrible is seen as a good thing by the community.

Because I'm not a fan I've only seen about a dozen of the videos (which isn't that much compared to the total) so I can only draw criticism from what I've seen:

Dark Ages Video had some serous problems with his comment on how social mobility was low and his generally strict drawing of the difference between peasants and nobility contradicts the evidence. There was also a failure to engage with the substance of why historians avoid value judgments in periodizations.

His "Mongols are the exception" bit is sometimes inaccurate and I'm not a fan of that sort of "quirky" history act since is sacrifices accuracy trying to be weird in a good way. For example he perpetuates the "Afghanistan is the Graveyard of Empires" myth that's been addressed in this subreddit a few times.

He also has a bit of a noble savage thing going on when talking about hunter gatherer societies and civilization.

Those are from the videos I did watch. Since I didn't enjoy or learn from them I avoided the rest so I can only say so much but I would give a word of caution to those who take them too seriously.

I think it also depends on your view of casual history, how stringent should we be considering its better than nothing? What standards should we have for pop history?

That being said I enjoyed his economic videos a lot more so its not like I hate the guy too much.

There are multiple questions in the FAQ about this.

Were the Mongols as exceptional as they say? Were they right to (apparently) base much of U.S. History on Eric Foner's work?

A concern that I have is that the condensation of the material can be misleading, by way of giving topics inappropriate weight, e.g., making the Russian Revolution a digression in the episode on WWI, while the Haitian Revolutions got their own episode. Making the Haitian Revolutions a digression in episodes on France, the Louisiana Purchase, or slavery might not be fair either and I appreciate the challenge (and I like their rejection of Eurocentrism) but it seems worth mentioning. Do any historians take issue with this?

Green's "thesoundandthefury," btw.

What I like about Crash Course World History isn't the specific facts or the events it chooses to highlight. I like how it teaches high schoolers to approach history the way a historian would. Take the Captain Cook episode. As far as simply relaying history goes, devoting a whole episode to Cook seems like a waste of limited space. But besides spreading the scope of their series to hit events in an oft ignored region, the episode examines the accounts of Cook's death from multiple angles and emphasizes how historians have to question pat narratives and incorporate the voices of those ignored in old school history telling.

For a very condensed information, I thought they are doing a good job in narrating a particular historical period.

His Ottoman an Venice video is inaccurate to an extreme degree. We're talking attributing the Hagia Sophia to the Ottomans inaccurate.