To go back on my suggestion for curating, I just checked the newsletter. It seems like the 7 selected articles of the week are the ones that had the most "success" (I'm guessing, views or interactions) this week.
On the last newletter, out of 7 articles, 3 are directly JS-ecosystem oriented. A quick look at the previous newsletters show a similar trend: about half of selected articles are strictly about the JavaScript ecosystem.
The other half are more often than not very junior-oriented (such as a basic guide for git rebase. Great content, but for a very fresh junior).
The problem with curating by most successful articles is that you're creating a feedback loop where you are reinforcing this population's prevalence on the platform.
On the other hand, I wrote a few articles which I think are quite decent, quite interesting takes, and I'm very probably not the only one in that situation. The issue is those articles don't get much visibility because they're not javascript-related at all, so they don't appear in the most popular tags.
A solution I might suggest is, again, human curation. Maybe you guys at DEV can try to browse different tags and share with us every week what YOU personally liked or found interesting.
Generally, the platform needs to put the brakes on the perpetual flow of beginner-JS content and try to promote different works, both on the feed and the newsletter.
Don't just put the brakes on the perpetual flow of beginner Javascript. Put the brakes on Javascript content full stop. There's hardly any variety to it which makes most of it uninteresting even to those who do Javascript, never mind those of us who don't. By all means let people write the three hundred and forty second article about how to turn text pink using Reactular, just don't promote it.
The masses of Javascript is off-putting to people who have interesting things to write about using other technologies. For a long time I didn't bother creating an account here because it was basically a Javascript fanboy site.
I might even go so far as to say don't promote anything that is wildly popular. Instead promote the interesting things lurking in the shadows. A good article that gets upvoted a hundred times will be promoted by its readers without any help.
Versatile software engineer with a background in .NET consulting and CMS development. Working on regaining my embedded development skills to get more involved with IoT opportunities.
This * a number I cannot even fathom. It's super frustrating writing a deep technical article that doesn't get promoted while drowning underneath regurgitations of popular JavaScript tutorials and top-5 lists, not to mention corporate spam.
I know I should be writing strictly for my own benefit, but I'd honestly rather just stick with my lab journal because it feels really demoralizing when stuff gets obliterated by a poor signal-to-noise ratio.
This is a pretty concrete suggestion, thanks! I'm curious to run this by not only the DEV team, but the incredible volunteer moderators who give their time and attention to helping this platform run smoothly.
Do you mind if I share this post and your suggestion with them?
I'm a friendly, non-dev, cisgender guy from NC who enjoys playing music/making noise, hiking, eating veggies, and hanging out with my best friend/wife + our 3 kitties + 1 greyhound.
Currently the newsletter is actually curated by humans, so all of the advice that you have for us here can be applied to our current methods.
I know that our team tries to choose from a variety of authors and touch on a variety of topics, but totally hear ya that JS/beginner posts are getting more air time than the rest. I think part of this is likely due to the fact that there are more posts tagged with #javascript and #beginners than anything else. If you look at our top tags page you are able to see the most used tags in descending order and how many posts are published under each — it's clear that JavaScript and Beginners have loads of posts created under these topics. We need to be aware of this and remember to look to other less used tags when curating the newsletter/top 7.
In addition to @samuelfaure points out about topics not in the “most popular tags”, I would like to see an option in “My Tags” to ignore specific tags. This could help the tags I am interested in that are not popular fill my feed more than they currently do.
Please let me know if this is already and option and I have simply missed it.
I'm a friendly, non-dev, cisgender guy from NC who enjoys playing music/making noise, hiking, eating veggies, and hanging out with my best friend/wife + our 3 kitties + 1 greyhound.
Great question! There is a way to make this happen, but it's a bit difficult to discover right now so totally understood that you missed it...
If you navigate to your User Dashboard (available when clicking on your image in the top right) and click on "Following Tags" (in the lefthand sidebar), you'll be taken to this page which allows you the option to adjust the "follow weight" of your different tags. A negative follow weight is counted as an "anti-follow" meaning that the tag will show up in your feed less.
Hi Ella, and thanks for reading and listening.
To go back on my suggestion for curating, I just checked the newsletter. It seems like the 7 selected articles of the week are the ones that had the most "success" (I'm guessing, views or interactions) this week.
On the last newletter, out of 7 articles, 3 are directly JS-ecosystem oriented. A quick look at the previous newsletters show a similar trend: about half of selected articles are strictly about the JavaScript ecosystem.
The other half are more often than not very junior-oriented (such as a basic guide for git rebase. Great content, but for a very fresh junior).
The problem with curating by most successful articles is that you're creating a feedback loop where you are reinforcing this population's prevalence on the platform.
On the other hand, I wrote a few articles which I think are quite decent, quite interesting takes, and I'm very probably not the only one in that situation. The issue is those articles don't get much visibility because they're not javascript-related at all, so they don't appear in the most popular tags.
A solution I might suggest is, again, human curation. Maybe you guys at DEV can try to browse different tags and share with us every week what YOU personally liked or found interesting.
Generally, the platform needs to put the brakes on the perpetual flow of beginner-JS content and try to promote different works, both on the feed and the newsletter.
Don't just put the brakes on the perpetual flow of beginner Javascript. Put the brakes on Javascript content full stop. There's hardly any variety to it which makes most of it uninteresting even to those who do Javascript, never mind those of us who don't. By all means let people write the three hundred and forty second article about how to turn text pink using Reactular, just don't promote it.
The masses of Javascript is off-putting to people who have interesting things to write about using other technologies. For a long time I didn't bother creating an account here because it was basically a Javascript fanboy site.
I might even go so far as to say don't promote anything that is wildly popular. Instead promote the interesting things lurking in the shadows. A good article that gets upvoted a hundred times will be promoted by its readers without any help.
This * a number I cannot even fathom. It's super frustrating writing a deep technical article that doesn't get promoted while drowning underneath regurgitations of popular JavaScript tutorials and top-5 lists, not to mention corporate spam.
I know I should be writing strictly for my own benefit, but I'd honestly rather just stick with my lab journal because it feels really demoralizing when stuff gets obliterated by a poor signal-to-noise ratio.
This is a pretty concrete suggestion, thanks! I'm curious to run this by not only the DEV team, but the incredible volunteer moderators who give their time and attention to helping this platform run smoothly.
Do you mind if I share this post and your suggestion with them?
Do whatever you want with it. Glad I could be of service.
This is helpful feedback!
Currently the newsletter is actually curated by humans, so all of the advice that you have for us here can be applied to our current methods.
I know that our team tries to choose from a variety of authors and touch on a variety of topics, but totally hear ya that JS/beginner posts are getting more air time than the rest. I think part of this is likely due to the fact that there are more posts tagged with #javascript and #beginners than anything else. If you look at our top tags page you are able to see the most used tags in descending order and how many posts are published under each — it's clear that JavaScript and Beginners have loads of posts created under these topics. We need to be aware of this and remember to look to other less used tags when curating the newsletter/top 7.
In addition to @samuelfaure points out about topics not in the “most popular tags”, I would like to see an option in “My Tags” to ignore specific tags. This could help the tags I am interested in that are not popular fill my feed more than they currently do.
Please let me know if this is already and option and I have simply missed it.
Great question! There is a way to make this happen, but it's a bit difficult to discover right now so totally understood that you missed it...
If you navigate to your User Dashboard (available when clicking on your image in the top right) and click on "Following Tags" (in the lefthand sidebar), you'll be taken to this page which allows you the option to adjust the "follow weight" of your different tags. A negative follow weight is counted as an "anti-follow" meaning that the tag will show up in your feed less.
☝️ This is all described in excellent detail by @afif in the post 💡 Quick Tips: Make your DEV.TO home feed better with "Anti-follow" Tag Weightings
Fantastic, thank you @michaeltharrington and the DEV team for this functionality!