Preventing the use of horribly outdated versions?

[anovicecodemonkey]

I see a lot of bug reports against versions of youtube-dl more than a month old, sometimes older. Would it not be desirable to implement a more in-your-face warning about the age of a particular version given that the software is updated frequently?

I first thought about implementing a simple check that would stop the software working after three weeks to a month. Although I personally don't think versions this old should be used no doubt others may differing views. The second way of addressing of this problem may be presenting the user with a message about the age of the software.

The latest version of youtube-dl was released on [date]. This version is more than [x] weeks old. We strongly recommend you update the software. Are you sure you want to continue [y/n]?

[juancri]

I think the second alternative is better. There are chances that the old version still works for the video the user wants to download, so it shouldn't prevent the user to try it.

About the warning, I think it should be displayed instead of the "Report this as a bug" message. In other words, the "Report this as a bug" message should be displayed only when youtube-dl is updated. IMHO.

[yan12125]

Local version checking can be enabled by --call-home. Also, now we have a big NOTICE in the issue template. This is no longer necessary.