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The collapsing quality of dev.to (2021)

wagslane.dev

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Re: The collapsing quality of dev.to (2021)

#21

Post by trentthethief »

I hate to say this but I feel like Dev had a nice start but went downhill fast.

Nearly all articles can be boiled down to “Look at this really basic thing, and follow me on A, B and C.

The first Dev talk I watched from the founder (Ben) was about how they gained a lot of traction being such a fast loading site, focus on content and less fluff. I loved the attention to performance, being open source and the customizations it enabled. Sounded great.

However the site got funding and started to focus on “diversity” and “inclusion” at all costs. Created a new CoC and the beginner content flooded in and has gone downhill since.

There is also a rampant spam issue and affiliate link farming.

Re: The collapsing quality of dev.to (2021)

#22

Post by Merg »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #16
onion2k wrote: post #10

The problem with dev.to, and pretty much every blogging platform like it, is that it encourages the mindset that the articles about problems you have yourself are the best articles to learn from, and that things that aren't directly applicable to other people won't get promoted. That leads people to think they should write boring, generic things about language fundamentals in order to become 'famous'. People end up r…

> The reality is that most interesting dev articles are about relatively unusual problems that a dev solved in an innovative way Do you have a list of those articles? And which sites do you visit to find those articles?

Lobste.rs frankly.

More programming oriented, less ego boosting.

Re: The collapsing quality of dev.to (2021)

#23

Post by agumonkey »

What's the average lifecycle of any website since the 2.0 days ? It's impressive how they constantly pop up and then pop out rapidly. Only to be replaced by the new -r variant.

Feels like articles talking about the low energy of lightning. Impressive but too short to matter.

Re: The collapsing quality of dev.to (2021)

#25

Post by trentthethief »

mattparcens wrote: post #20

I vowed never to use this site because I found certain elements of their code conduct to be questionable. Why not prioritize everyone’s safety over anyone’s comfort? And the bit about “reverse -isms” is wholly ambiguous. It screams to never invest one second of effort in the site.

I will be downvoted for this, but the whole focus on marginalized people at the cost of everyone else, and not allowing any reverse-ism debates pretty much sums up the site.

A giant marginalized circle jerk.

Re: The collapsing quality of dev.to (2021)

#26

Post by b112 »

Merg wrote: post #22
uxcolumbo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that most interesting dev articles are about relatively unusual problems that a dev solved in an innovative way Do you have a list of those articles? And which sites do you visit to find those articles?

Lobste.rs frankly. More programming oriented, less ego boosting.

Are there magnets involved?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hzBh0J1YFU

Re: The collapsing quality of dev.to (2021)

#28

Post by mellosouls »

invalidname wrote: post #4

Dev.to does allow downvotes and blocking bad content. You need to become a moderator to do that. I'm such an external moderator and flagged a lot of abuse in the system. I've noticed an improvement in the past couple of months where I have less content to flag. So they probably improved their spam account detection. There's a lot of beginner content which is fine. Some marketing/SEO content which is to be expected. I…

There's a lot of beginner content which is fine.

Well, not really. That's the point.

Re: The collapsing quality of dev.to (2021)

#29

Post by jacooper »

invalidname wrote: post #4

Dev.to does allow downvotes and blocking bad content. You need to become a moderator to do that. I'm such an external moderator and flagged a lot of abuse in the system. I've noticed an improvement in the past couple of months where I have less content to flag. So they probably improved their spam account detection. There's a lot of beginner content which is fine. Some marketing/SEO content which is to be expected. I…

> I blog on all of them.

Wouldn't that hurt your articles ? Since there are multiple sites with the same content? Or if you have a blog, that would also drive traffic away from it, no?

Re: The collapsing quality of dev.to (2021)

#30

Post by invalidname »

jacooper wrote: post #29
invalidname wrote: post #4

Dev.to does allow downvotes and blocking bad content. You need to become a moderator to do that. I'm such an external moderator and flagged a lot of abuse in the system. I've noticed an improvement in the past couple of months where I have less content to flag. So they probably improved their spam account detection. There's a lot of beginner content which is fine. Some marketing/SEO content which is to be expected. I…

> I blog on all of them. Wouldn't that hurt your articles ? Since there are multiple sites with the same content? Or if you have a blog, that would also drive traffic away from it, no?

All of them support canonical links. So no.
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