[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.

[dewey]

> 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.

I was with you until that sentence. Focusing on “diversity” and “inclusion” or having a Code of Conduct with values like "Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences" is most likely not the reason for a community going downhill or beginner content flooding in.

The more likely reason is that the community became too big, the fluff posts from Medium shifted to other platforms and them not having a solid system for curating and surfacing interesting and valuable posts.

[AdrianB1]

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?

[addicted]

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).

[AdrianB1]

Read again the paragraph with the title "What could Dev.to do better?". It is exactly that: no downvotes or flagging of low quality content in the name of inclusivity.

[johnywalks]

Same thing happened with Medium. Initially it had thoughtful content and once the platform became more popular, it also attracted worse content.

Typical articles:

How to build and Android app.

1. Learn android

2. Find and idea.

3. Build the app.

Thanks for reading this. Follow me on Twatter etc....

They basically baited you to open the link with an interesting title and the content had no substance.

[Nextgrid]

> Follow me on Twatter etc....

Back in the good old days, forums typically heavily restricted self-promotion (even more so when it’s for commercial gain). Constantly shilling for your own website/Twitter/etc would end up earning you a ban.

I don’t understand why these social media platforms don’t enforce the same. Not only will this discourage this kind of crap but it would also benefit them as it would avoid people driving traffic away from the site (or having to pay for a paid commercial plan in order to do so).