So I got 12 replies to this 5-minute rant - while the article I worked on for half a day got zero. Ha.
Well, that pretty much says it all, and confirms what several people indicated in the replies: no point in wasting your time carefully curating content.
Why did I think this site was going to be different. 😕
I would consider that there are different types of content and they perform differently.
Content that is in a High Engagement category like this will earn a lot of initial attention and comments etc... but will longer term be lost to time because it's a very topical/current post.
High quality/Evergreen content will perform much better long term (as long as your SEO is good). The high quality posts usually are solving a problem or providing detailed useful information for the reader. But everyone that will at some point need that information is not necessarily currently in need of the information, so they won't be looking for that article right now. But in the future when they do need that information, if you can make sure you're the result that pops up on Google, you'll get that view and interaction when they really need it.
All of my top performing posts were like this - they started with minimal views, but I've seen people consistently find and react to the articles over time. It doesn't have the same instant gratification as an overnight success post, but long term they're outperforming.
Though fiddling with these kind of knobs could also have undesirable consequences.
One issue is that you can only follow an author who you are already aware of - otherwise stumbling upon somebody is mostly a matter of luck.
Perhaps an alternate scheme could be to follow audiences (separate from author follows), i.e. have a separate (audience) feed that is populated by articles that are liked/commented by your "audience follows", i.e. commenters who have displayed interests that for whatever reasons are relevant to your own. Hopefully interests could vary enough between most individuals which may lead to more frequent, successful author discoveries.
I think this is a very good point. In fact one of my Dev.to practices is to read articles commented on by yourself (and three or four others) - which I have to do manually of course. This practice of reading articles commented on by those who are very knowledgeable and then following the discussion is certainly where I learn most here and I am often forced to challenge my own beliefs...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
So I got 12 replies to this 5-minute rant - while the article I worked on for half a day got zero. Ha.
Well, that pretty much says it all, and confirms what several people indicated in the replies: no point in wasting your time carefully curating content.
Why did I think this site was going to be different. 😕
I would consider that there are different types of content and they perform differently.
Content that is in a High Engagement category like this will earn a lot of initial attention and comments etc... but will longer term be lost to time because it's a very topical/current post.
High quality/Evergreen content will perform much better long term (as long as your SEO is good). The high quality posts usually are solving a problem or providing detailed useful information for the reader. But everyone that will at some point need that information is not necessarily currently in need of the information, so they won't be looking for that article right now. But in the future when they do need that information, if you can make sure you're the result that pops up on Google, you'll get that view and interaction when they really need it.
All of my top performing posts were like this - they started with minimal views, but I've seen people consistently find and react to the articles over time. It doesn't have the same instant gratification as an overnight success post, but long term they're outperforming.
There is the consumer perspective of this trend as well:
Article No Longer Available
Is Dev.to victim of its own success?
Samuel FAURE ・ Jul 6 '21 ・ 3 min read
Dev.to posts quality
stereobooster ・ Nov 23 '20 ・ 4 min read
Article No Longer Available
Now as a content consumer there are some things that can be done:
Two things you can do to improve your DEV home feed
Ben Halpern ・ Jun 25 '20 ・ 1 min read
Changelog: Adjust the weights of tags you follow
Ben Halpern for The DEV Team ・ Nov 30 '18 ・ 2 min read
Though fiddling with these kind of knobs could also have undesirable consequences.
One issue is that you can only follow an author who you are already aware of - otherwise stumbling upon somebody is mostly a matter of luck.
Perhaps an alternate scheme could be to follow audiences (separate from author follows), i.e. have a separate (audience) feed that is populated by articles that are liked/commented by your "audience follows", i.e. commenters who have displayed interests that for whatever reasons are relevant to your own. Hopefully interests could vary enough between most individuals which may lead to more frequent, successful author discoveries.
FYI: I came across this article via It IS possible to get a voice here!
I think this is a very good point. In fact one of my Dev.to practices is to read articles commented on by yourself (and three or four others) - which I have to do manually of course. This practice of reading articles commented on by those who are very knowledgeable and then following the discussion is certainly where I learn most here and I am often forced to challenge my own beliefs...