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Discussion on: Is Dev.to victim of its own success?

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bdwakefield profile image
Benjamin D Wakefield

I would say that I agree with this 100%. I get the email digests and for a while, probably at least all of 2021 so far, I haven't opened but maybe a handful of links to articles -- this being one of them.

The content isn't all that pertinent to me unfortunately. I recognize that I could contribute some -- and have intended to for a long time. I haven't had as much time to read as I would like -- and unfortunately for writing, reading is better for me in terms of where I am professionally.

For a long time now "listicles" and similar style content has been quite frankly, mostly just garbage akin to blogspam. It would probably would be best of they were banned -- or relegated to a corner somewhere.

@afif / @ellativity Given you two are moderators, maybe this suggestion is best directed toward you instead of the ether -- maybe you can share it somewhere it would gain traction.

I think I agree with @samuelfaure 'successful' content needs to be de-emphasized. Or at a minimum limit how much JavaScript gets focus. There is much more to development than JavaScript, et al. The only way to encourage different content is going to be to promote it.

I think human curation and multiple "interest topics" subscription options -- have an entry level focused digest and more for other/advanced topics.

Dev.to desperately needs categorization and taxonomy. If it had this then you could create newsletters with more curated content. That of course has more limited use if all of the content is primarily for "Junior Bootcamp Dev" level.

I'll do my part by trying to work up some "higher level" content to share -- but as of yet I haven't been inspired :D

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afif profile image
Temani Afif

as a moderator we already have a tool to "downvote" posts so they are less visbile but unfortunately it's not enough because the algorithm also consider the reactions so it's hard to fight the bad listicles getting a ton of reactions that's why I suggested in the above a "nuclear button" that is immune to reactions and can allow us to remove an articles, not from the site, but at least from the feed.

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bdwakefield profile image
Benjamin D Wakefield

Yeah, You definitely need better tools. It is like a lot of other places though... low effort, 'click bait', low quality things tend to do better... and why wouldn't you spend time on that if you can do barely anything instead of creating something actually profound? Valuable content is more difficult to produce.