I wouldn't have taken down the videos if they can legitimately help people. You can disable comments and voting if you don't care what others think about the videos.

I appreciate the service that Youtube offers. They provide controls that allow a channel owner to tailor a channel as desired. You can make your entire channel private. Then, you can link your videos to an external site where you can dissociate your videos from Youtube.com, thereby taking advantage of the superior Youtube servers while having more control of user traffic. By the way, I manage a Youtube channel related to self-defense.