I'm a DEV Trusted Member, which means I spend a pretty unreasonable amount of time in the review queue and comment sections here. That gives you opinions.
Some of them are "please build this immediately," and some of them are "please never let this touch the platform."
Here are five of the first kind, and three of the second.
5 Features I Wish Existed
1. An in-thread translate toggle
I play a mobile game called War Sniper 3D that has clan chats. Every message has a small button next to it — tap it, and that message translates into your own language on the spot. People type comfortably in whatever language they think in, and everyone else still follows along.
DEV has a genuinely global writer base, and right now if someone comments in Hindi, German, or anything other than English, most of the thread just skips past it. A one-tap translate toggle on comments (and ideally posts) would open up a huge amount of the platform that's currently invisible to non-speakers.
2. Visible public edit history
If you edit a published post today, nobody reading it has any way to know what changed. For casual typo fixes, that's fine. But for anything substantive — a walked-back claim, a corrected code snippet, a softened opinion — readers deserve to see the diff.
A public revision history would make the platform more accountable without costing writers anything they're not already doing.
3. Real series discovery
Once you're already inside a series, navigation is actually fine — every post shows a widget linking to all the other parts, right below the tags and again at the bottom. That part works.
The problem is getting there in the first place. You can't search DEV for a series by name. There's no browse page or tab for series anywhere on the platform. The dedicated series page exists, but it's bare — no description, no custom styling, just a stacked list of post cards.
The only way into any series is already having a direct link to one of its posts. For a platform that actively encourages writing series, the discovery layer in front of them barely exists — everything past that first link works, but that first link is doing all the work alone.
A Discover feed tab for well-received series would fix most of this in one move — the same way the main feed surfaces individual posts, a series-specific version would surface multi-part work people have actually finished and readers engaged with, instead of leaving series to spread entirely through luck and direct links.
4. Opt-in push notifications
DEV does send an email when someone replies or mentions you, and there's actually a nice bit of logic behind it: if you don't react to the comment or reply within roughly five minutes, that's when the email kicks in. If you're already in the conversation, you don't need another notification telling you about a conversation you're actively having.
That's good notification design. It keeps the inbox from becoming a firehose.
But there's no option for an actual push notification to your phone or desktop — the kind that shows up on a lock screen or as a system alert without opening your email.
For an active discussion thread, I'd love the choice to turn those on. Keep DEV's current quiet-by-default behavior for everyone, but let people who want real-time conversations opt into instant pushes.
Sometimes I don't need another email. I just need to know someone replied right now.
5. True co-authored posts
I built FinePrint, an AI contract analyzer, with Yug Vasava for the Gemma 4 Dev Challenge. When we wrote it up, one of us had to be "the author" and the other got a name-drop in the text.
DEV does have a co-author feature — but only for posts published under an organization account, where you can add up to 4 co-authors who show up at the top of the post. Even there, the post stays mainly attributed to the primary author, not split equally. More importantly, it's a workaround for org accounts, not something available on a personal post like the one I wrote.
For a platform built around hackathons and DEV Challenges — almost all team efforts, usually between two individuals, not an org — that's still a real gap.
3 Things I'm Relieved Don't Exist
1. Public downvote counters
Comments and posts can get flagged, but there's no visible dislike count anywhere. That's a good thing.
A public downvote counter turns disagreement into a pile-on mechanic instead of an actual reply. If you think a take is wrong, the platform makes you say so, not just tap a button.
2. Visible view counts next to reactions
You can see reactions and comments on a post, but not raw view counts. It sounds like a small omission, but it's doing real work: it keeps the platform feeling like people engaged because they wanted to, not like a scoreboard showing you exactly how many people looked and didn't bother.
3. A "People You May Like" recommendation engine
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn — all of them constantly nudge you to follow more accounts based on your activity, your contacts, who you just followed.
DEV doesn't do this. Following someone here is still a deliberate choice based on their actual writing, not a suggestion the platform pushed in front of you to pad follower counts. It keeps the whole platform feeling like a place to read, not a network you're being optimized to grow.
None of this is a complaint about the platform overall — I wouldn't have built a career-facing presence here if it wasn't working. But every platform you use daily builds up both lists, and I'd rather write mine down than just carry it around.
What's on yours? Anything above you'd actually use, or anything you think I've got wrong? Drop it below. 👇
Top comments (74)
It would be great if you can add those list into the Issues tab on the Forem Repository. @ben would love your suggestions on what features should be added onto DEV.
Great seeing me as an example lol
Sure will do it. And thank you for the read, I genuinely thought why are people not interacting?😅
Also, about the example, I didn't want to add someone as one without asking them out. So, I thought who about someone whom everyone knows.😂
Anyways, Have a Great Day!
lol fair enough. Sometimes it's bad timing and sometimes it's great timing. I get those alot.
A ping would be nice "@francistrdev", so that I can see it as well. (I found this article by simply scrolling lol).
You as well :D
Yeah bad timing, its just that I had day off for college and had this draft since days and was getting bored, so I posted at the most unreasonable time: IST: noon🫠. From next time I'll definitely ping you.😄
Did it, thanks for the idea!😄
No problem! Do note it does take a bit of time since they are busy with other features, but they will look at it for sure! Just to let you know the updates on that.
Yeah I get it! and thanks for this, I've actually never tried this before. And I'm fine. I actually wanted to contribute to forem but I don't understand RUBY and well haven't contributed to a well known OSS yet. But still thanks for the info!😄
I would like the "Followers" really mean something here.
I currently have 4645. Or that's what dev.to says. But when I write a new article? If I get 100 views, I am lucky. Reactions? Little to none...
So what are those "people" following? Is dev.to failing to show my content to them? Or am I really so so bad in writing that everyone just see it is an article by me and run away? Should I believe that? After seeing so many AI-slop nonsense that gets engaged (with AI generated comments)?
Ok Sir, let me answer this very precisely. Cause I used to think the same thing.
See I have this much followers but not all posts can get proper amount of views:
The reason: A lot of people on DEV are just for reading content, most are working individuals who open it once in a while. And handful amount of bot accounts.
DEV Team solved this problem by having curation feature. So, even if you see an AI-generated post getting a lot of engagement, there are actually very low chances, it'll get curated.
Also, when someone follows you, they get a notification always. Also, your posts are prioritized in their feeds.
Also, DEV promotes the posts which get early engagement.
This is it, Sir. You can ask me if you have any other doubts.
And Sir @francistrdev, was this all correct?
Based on what I read, this is normal for followers vs views.
Sometimes you have a lot of followers, but get little engagement. Sometimes vise versa. It happens and that's for any social media from the beginning of time.
For example, 1K followers does not mean 1K views for each post. It fluctuates and that's normal.
Correct, but note that Community Curators are human and we decide on who's post gets a Gem.
Hope that helps!
Honestly, no it does not help. Clicking "follow" imply you are interested in reading more from that author. Of course you never get everyone into reading your articles. I also didnt thoroughly read all content from 15 ppl I chose to follow here. But are you really telling me my articles generate notifications to couple of thousand people and I constantly fail to impres 95+% of them? But they are not cancelling the follower status which would be the most logical step to avoid content you are actually not interested to see. They just quietly keep ignoring me... I should belive that?
I'll tell you what I think it is going here - I actually have very little real human followers. Tens, maybe lower hundreds. That naturally result into my poor numbers. And that's fine. I am not actively building my reach and I am no famous person. So it is as it is.
The rest are just mere bots. Bots that someohw are able to discover my account and hook to me via "follow" button in significant numbers, but then just sit there and do nothing.
I call it loud and proud, that accounts like
@ayush_mapari_dea3f3a92232,@emmanuel_ohani_c253de5899,@boyoyfg_15a0f9035c4e9dec8,@sri_balaji_6a3853ae3ba01or@sudais_yy_04c73268f48b7a1are no real people.And you are either not aware of the sheer amount of bot traffic here or you chose not to care because any traffic help you inflate your numbers and look more relevant.
That's ok. It is your page. Your money involved. I am just a guest here. And to be fair - you are great platform for the writing itself. The best I know. Even with little to no engagement here, I can at least effortlesly publish here and link my articles elsewhere. And they will stay here indefinitely (I hope).
But for a feedback what to change to make me love dev.to even more, the thing with followers is the most painful for me.
Sir, it's simple if you got a genuinely good issue that none of us can. Just add it to forem repo. The guys who own the platform would be happy to hear about it.
And yes sir I have an IND-TECH-WEEKLY series and about 4300 followers but get less than 100 views on it.
And we don't inflate anything but you still got some questions ask to the ones that can answer you properly.
@francistrdev, @ben, @peter, @heyitsjem, @jess .
These guys will help with your queries.
Okay, this one has been sitting in my drafts for way too long. 😂
I've spent a frankly unreasonable amount of time on DEV, so eventually I had to make a wishlist.
Some of these features feel like obvious wins.
Some would probably make the platform considerably worse.
And I'm genuinely curious which side of that line you think I've put them on.
What would you add to the list? 👀
Great post! Nice to see that you also turned it into issues on Forem 🎉
What I am constantly missing on DEV is a way to organize my reading list 😧 I have plenty of articles saved for later, and it would be super helpful to filter and categorize them somehow, for example, based on the topic or reading time. Sometimes I only have a small bit of time, perfect for reading a 5-minute article; other times I have a wish to read about a certain topic, and I remember I have a perfect article saved on the list, but need to look for it among all the others.
Or maybe it's just me having a mess in the Reading List and having +100 articles saved there? 😅😅😅
That's a good one. Well TBH people do save posts for later but not 100+😅.
But right now you can filter them by tags, is that not working or you got some other filter in mind?
I rather meant some custom sections/shelves you could create for saved articles, for example: "for my current project", "relatable", etc. Now that I think about it, it could also be helpful to have such an option in Archived. Sometimes I want to go back to some article but cannot remember which one I'm looking for.
Yeah, now that's a proper wishlist addition. You can add this one to Forem repo.
Good idea, actually! Will do now :)
I really like the idea of a one-tap translation feature, especially for DEV’s global community. The point about series discovery also makes a lot of sense—finding the first post in a series shouldn’t depend on already having a direct link. And I agree that keeping downvote counters and follower-style recommendation systems out helps preserve the quality of discussion. Great thought-provoking list!
I was 100% expecting you to bring up the progress bar. Here, the main content is usually way shorter than the comment section, and I often have to scroll down to see the end, then go back to the top.
We don't have progress bar, but we got this:
You can collapse comment threads. But yeah if you think progress bar is a better move, just add it to the Forem repo, they'll be happy to hear it. Have A Great Day!
Oh thankyou! I didn't notice it. But a progress bar would do the job without having to scroll down and collapse the comment threads.
Oh, we can't collapse the comment section as a whole?
Then maybe they should add that too...
Bro, what's the point of collapsing whole comment section?
Also, if you think this is genuinely needed, you can add it to the forem repo as an issue.
If I can collapse the whole comment section by default, I can infer how much of the post I have read by looking at the scrollbar. That's why. I'll open an issue to add the progress bar when I get time 👍
Oh! My bad. Bro, you should've said earlier that you wanted progress bar for the post. Also, that's why I said you should open an issue on forem repo.
No problem! 🙂
feature 5 hits close to home. I co-authored pieces with people too. One name goes on top. The other gets a mention in the text. That split never matches the real work. Did DEV give any reason why co-author credit stays inside organization accounts only??
No, I haven't asked them explicitly😅. But yeah I've added this as a new feature issue on Forem repo. Let's see!
Love the translate toggle and public edit history ideas; those would seriously level up trust and reach here. I’d add one more: better tooling for collaborative moderation on heated threads, so Trusted Members can de-escalate early instead of just reacting to flags.
I think it'd be better if you add this one from your POV through an issue on Forem repo. And Have A Great Day!
It's been quite a while since I went back to someone's post and they had very obviously completely rewritten it, but it's an interesting feature request!
Well, like someone said in the comments, that they saw someone quietly changing facts. So, yeah something like this would help.
The edit history one reads differently if you come from a docs background. In API documentation, a visible revision history isn't a transparency nicety, it's the thing readers use to figure out whether the snippet they're about to copy is still current. DEV posts have exactly the same decay problem: half the tutorials I land on were accurate for a version of the library that shipped two years ago, and there's no signal at all about whether the author came back and fixed it.
So I'd argue the diff view matters less than a lightweight "substantively updated on X" badge. Full diffs are noisy for typo fixes and most readers won't open them. A single marker that separates "author corrected this" from "author fixed a comma" would do most of the work, and it's the writer who knows which one it was.
On your #3 relief - no view counts, I'd push back gently. Not showing views publicly is good. Not showing them to the author either means you genuinely can't tell whether a post underperformed because the idea was weak or because you published at the wrong hour. That's the difference between learning something and guessing.
That's why I said, not for typo fixes.
And views are visible to authors on dashboard.
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