[Kovah]

I have left Dev.to long ago after being one of the early adopters. The quality of articles is going down every time I visit the site. And this is absolutely not surprising: Dev.to encourages clickbait and low effort articles. Likes seem to be the thriving factor for pushing articles and you can even earn achievements for post with the most likes and views. A possible solution could be to ditch likes and view counts entirely, so people focus on the content instead of trying to publish articles with the most likes. Fight the root cause and not the symptoms.

[lumenwrites]

Then how would you rank the articles, measure their quality, and choose what to put on the front page?

[AdrianB1]

The same way you check what you buy from an online store: by the number and content of the negative reviews or downvotes. But they don't exist here because inclusivity is wanted more than quality.

[Kovah]

Like counts, be it likes alone or Reddit-style with downvotes, is the wrong mechanic for community-generated content, as it incentivises posting something "for a quick like". As explained in my other reply, Slashdot has a really healthy, decade-old community without having like counts. Posts are ranked by comment count and if there is something really bad, users can report it. It's that easy and it works.

[lumenwrites]

Wouldn't comment counts incentivize controversy-inducing content instead?

[doodlesdev]

That's how I feel about it, it's essentially the way stuff is incentivized on 4chan, and we all know that community isn't really know for its high quality, friendly discourse...

[Kovah]

Why is it necessary to measure quality?

Slashdot is around for like decades, a real internet antiquity, and made it without any likes or view counts. Posts that generate a lot of comments are ranked higher, as one can assume it generates more discourse. What else is really needed for a community? Isn't it about sharing knowledge and discussing it?

A front page, as you mentioned it, can consist of either posts that generate a lot of discourse. Or make it simple and just display the latest posts of the people you follow on it.

[minimaxir]

Same way more sophisticated content algorithms work, such as measuring retention (e.g. % of scroll depth) and bounce rate as a source of relevancy.