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Should listicles be forced to have a tag so we can hide them from feed?

Keff on December 09, 2023

I know, I know, many people have talked about, and hated on listicles here on DEV many times. But to be completely honest, they're some of the mo...
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panditapan profile image
Pandita

What if instead of tagging, it could be a muted words list sorta thing so it's handled by the user rather than the site?

It could also look inside an article's content because for a time Dev was filled with american politics because of a certain orange man and considering what may happen in the future I would love to avoid any of that 😮‍💨 and creating a tag for this is a bit of an overkill.

Muted words/phrases would help with this and we could even do regex style stuff for those listicles and the like.

Just proposing another little idea :3

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

That's also a good idea!

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️

There are already guidelines like this for AI generated content on the site. But, since adding such a tag to your post will pretty much guarantee a much lower viewership and effectively stigmatise your 'work' - almost no-one does... rendering the guidelines effectively useless.

For something like this to work, these tags need to be applied automatically, and not be removable. Some form of AI could probably be used to select candidate posts for the tags, but there would likely need to be human oversight to prevent false positives. The results of this oversight could be fed back into the model(s) to improve detection rates.

We desperately need something like this to save Dev from the onslaught of low quality listicles, AI generated SEO content, ChatGPT copy pastes etc. that it has seen over the last couple of years. This used to be a really good site. Sigh

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ingosteinke profile image
Ingo Steinke, web developer

Not all listicles are bad. A few are good, but many are miserable and dangerously misleading. Maybe forem should add a dislike/downvote button or increase the weight of "low quality" moderation signals against likes and interactions.

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

I've come across very few decent ones, but I'm sure good ones exist somewhere 😂

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

I totally understand. I also considered looking for something else, but I still like dev a lot. I've also tried a few alternatives and I think it's one of the best ones if not the best one. Let's hope the team can find a way to fix this, as it's something that bother a lot of people.

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miketalbot profile image
Mike Talbot ⭐

Oh please yes....

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best_codes profile image
Best Codes

Yes, they should. So annoying sometimes, and it would be nice to filter them!

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rouilj profile image
John P. Rouillard

Agreed. It would be nice if we could include it in an RSS feed as well
(maybe embedded with Tag: .. in the description) as that is the primary way I read dev.to.

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

That's already a thing in the guidelines. But people try to not add the tag, as not many people want to read AI generated articles

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

That's a good idea! I'd also be willing to do that.

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isaacdlyman profile image
Isaac Lyman • Edited

My idea is it should cost a dollar to create a post. That’s it, that’s the whole idea.

If people have to pay a dollar to post, that will drive away the vast majority of the backlink spammers, ChatGPT copy-pasters, and low-effort marketing content.

Any listicles left after that will probably be of higher quality.

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kaamkiya profile image
Kaamkiya

That's true, but unfortunately it would also drive away people who are honestly trying to post.

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devnaqvi profile image
devnaqvi • Edited

Can you please expand a bit on what do you mean by "listicles"? Should I believe you don't meant all the listicles?

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

Top 10 libraries every developer must know to be god...
These 10 sites will make you 7 figures...
All those kinds of articles.

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devnaqvi profile image
devnaqvi

What about stuff like "30 React Interview Questions" or "17 JS tips and tricks"?

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

Yup same thing, any articles that are just a list of things. Listicles is the combination of the words list and article.