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The collapsing quality of dev.to (2021)

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

#81

Post by thfuran »

DavidSharff wrote: post #76
thecupisblue wrote: post #53

It's not just dev.to, it's most online developer content sources these days. A lot of people noticed that you can become 'famous' online which will gain you the ability to sell a course, earn from content or get better jobs and opportunities due to 'influence'. And it works especially good if you can find a new framework/language/platform that you can write content about, since there is less content and you can get '…

Oh if only the fallout stopped there. The proliferation of these sources have torpedoed my Google effectiveness. Not only do these sources amplify themselves, they are of near necessity targeted at simple use cases. The result? Google has ample popular material filled with my relevant keywords but void of any usefulness to anyone not just getting started. As it happens, the people with the most questions _are_ just g…

>unless I have a sequence where I can look for an exact match

Google these days treats quoted strings as guidelines anyways.

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

#82

Post by invalidname »

addicted wrote: post #77
invalidname wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to start writing somewhere. The fact that they get visibility relates to upvotes and lack of publications. They also have advantages in communicating with other beginners.

Sure. However, if one specific platform becomes the location where everyone is writing their beginner content, then even if the writers may benefit, the platform will suffer. Or at the very least, appear low quality to someone who is beyond beginner level.

There are several sites like this including Hashnode, medium, tealfeed, etc. They all suffer from the same problem.

Medium solved this with publications. Others solved it by tagging, moderation etc. although that's not ideal either.

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

#83

Post by bsedlm »

thfuran wrote: post #81
DavidSharff wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh if only the fallout stopped there. The proliferation of these sources have torpedoed my Google effectiveness. Not only do these sources amplify themselves, they are of near necessity targeted at simple use cases. The result? Google has ample popular material filled with my relevant keywords but void of any usefulness to anyone not just getting started. As it happens, the people with the most questions _are_ just g…

>unless I have a sequence where I can look for an exact match Google these days treats quoted strings as guidelines anyways.

I think it's even worse:

Google these days treats your whole query as a suggestion

but quite frankly I am a bit of a glass-half-empty person

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

#84

Post by thfuran »

bsedlm wrote: post #83
thfuran wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>unless I have a sequence where I can look for an exact match Google these days treats quoted strings as guidelines anyways.

I think it's even worse: Google these days treats your whole query as a suggestion but quite frankly I am a bit of a glass-half-empty person

Yeah, but the quotes were meant to mean specifically, exactly this string and even that doesn't work anymore.

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

#87

Post by [deleted] »

addicted wrote: post #66
AdrianB1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article is practically saying it, in order to be "inclusive" quality filtering does not exist. That makes quality nosedive, but it is inclusive - makes sense?

No, it doesn’t. Unless you assume that only a certain group of people can put out quality articles. Which based simply on HN articles is obviously not true (even though some people may continue thinking it is due to their preconceived biases, based on how HN comments in articles written by women will invariably have multiple people refer to the author with male pronouns).

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by joe8756438 »

I pretty much agree with everything here. At the same time however, in the past 10 years official documentation for languages, frameworks, libraries, etc. has got _so_ much better. And while it’s true that googling stuff had become difficult, usually i can find the answer I need on how-to topics just by looking at the official docs.

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

#89

Post by eatonphil »

lf-non wrote: post #15
meet_zaveri wrote: post #3

I too agree with lack of quality content. There are other platforms like Hashnode that you can definitely give a spin.

Hashnode is not so much better in this regard. These days I primarily follow InfoQ, Habr, a few select individual bloggers, few larger company blogs and my feed has substantially improved.

Infoq is just a different kind of low quality IMO. It's experienced, enterprise Java/. NET devs and managers writing long articles that don't say anything or encourage you to overcomplicate things.

I'm sure it's not all like that just like I know there are some great devs/writers who use dev.to.

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

#90

Post by phlummox »

sshine wrote: post #45
Hallucinaut wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one get an invite to join though? The suggestion seems to be to scroll through a list of hundreds of online handles to see if you know someone by their pseudonym, and assumes you can reach them out of band, which is obviously not going to work for the vast majority of people.

I’ll invite you. Just send me an email.

Might I email you as well? I'm a regular lobste.rs reader, but not yet a member.
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