I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
It is up until the point where quantity of viewers comes into play. There's a tipping point where, no matter whose algorithm is running the show, popular users get more power to write low-quality content.
Once they reach a certain point, people will see them more often and upvote them regardless. And that compounds the problem because people have a finite attention span and don't have time to devote to other, potentially far more interesting content.
I've mentioned it before, but it's one of the things I like most about this place - if you see something in your feed (however it got there) you can't see how popular the author is, so there's much less of a bandwagon effect with following someone simply because they already have a ton of followers.
It's not perfect, and I'm sure that posts which already have a lot of little hearts next to them would do better than the exact same post without the signifiers, but it's a better balance than places like Twitter and Facebook and Quora and and and...
I totally agree with this. Also, I think there is a phenomenon in general where a piece of content can get popular without being particularly good: There are things that are easy to agree with, easy to like, and such content can get lots of upvotes, even if it doesn't have much substance.
Here on dev.to, if something is more technical, then only the people who really go through the thing and make the effort to confirm it makes sense are likely to upvote it, so by definition it will get fewer reactions than something general and immediately digestible. I think this is a particular challenge for a site like dev.to, where this could lead to good technical content getting swamped by click-baity titles and listicles.
I don't want to be mean, but I do find that there is more of the latter in my dev.to feed than I would personally like... It's a tough problem though. If you don't measure people's reactions, then what do you measure?
I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
I find there're few enough click-baity titles here that whenever I see one it really jumps out at me. It's difficult what to do about it to discourage the practice though - a "downvote" option would probably be self-defeating in the long run and there's often nothing actually wrong with the articles themselves.
Ah yes, the sellout effect. If one becomes entrenched as a popular creator, it's possible to turnout more quantity at a lower quality. I believe YouTube has this problem. It's hard to begrudge those people as well -- once monetization is involved, it's understandable that people choose money over quality.
The bandwagon effect is really high on places like Instagram and Twitter. If you don't have followers, people won't follow you. I'm sure it happens here as well with likes.
Even without showing them though, using them to decide what is shown makes a big difference.
I kind of like how Netflix attempts to show a matching rating. Instead of absolute scores, a score relative to you personally. It hides the likes, but also keeps the content relevant -- well, maybe, based on my Netflix account it's horribly broken! :D
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We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
It is up until the point where quantity of viewers comes into play. There's a tipping point where, no matter whose algorithm is running the show, popular users get more power to write low-quality content.
Once they reach a certain point, people will see them more often and upvote them regardless. And that compounds the problem because people have a finite attention span and don't have time to devote to other, potentially far more interesting content.
I've mentioned it before, but it's one of the things I like most about this place - if you see something in your feed (however it got there) you can't see how popular the author is, so there's much less of a bandwagon effect with following someone simply because they already have a ton of followers.
It's not perfect, and I'm sure that posts which already have a lot of little hearts next to them would do better than the exact same post without the signifiers, but it's a better balance than places like Twitter and Facebook and Quora and and and...
I totally agree with this. Also, I think there is a phenomenon in general where a piece of content can get popular without being particularly good: There are things that are easy to agree with, easy to like, and such content can get lots of upvotes, even if it doesn't have much substance.
Here on dev.to, if something is more technical, then only the people who really go through the thing and make the effort to confirm it makes sense are likely to upvote it, so by definition it will get fewer reactions than something general and immediately digestible. I think this is a particular challenge for a site like dev.to, where this could lead to good technical content getting swamped by click-baity titles and listicles.
I don't want to be mean, but I do find that there is more of the latter in my dev.to feed than I would personally like... It's a tough problem though. If you don't measure people's reactions, then what do you measure?
I find there're few enough click-baity titles here that whenever I see one it really jumps out at me. It's difficult what to do about it to discourage the practice though - a "downvote" option would probably be self-defeating in the long run and there's often nothing actually wrong with the articles themselves.
Ah yes, the sellout effect. If one becomes entrenched as a popular creator, it's possible to turnout more quantity at a lower quality. I believe YouTube has this problem. It's hard to begrudge those people as well -- once monetization is involved, it's understandable that people choose money over quality.
The bandwagon effect is really high on places like Instagram and Twitter. If you don't have followers, people won't follow you. I'm sure it happens here as well with likes.
Even without showing them though, using them to decide what is shown makes a big difference.
I kind of like how Netflix attempts to show a matching rating. Instead of absolute scores, a score relative to you personally. It hides the likes, but also keeps the content relevant -- well, maybe, based on my Netflix account it's horribly broken! :D