[jacurtis]

I think its the same as it has always been.

They went from being bad compared to everything else to now feeling good compared to everything else.

Basically they stayed static and the rest of the internet worsened around them and our perspectives are now skewed.

What used to feel like a spammy content farm is actually not that bad now that we have seen real spammy content farms, like the SO clones that just take SO posts, rip out important css elements so it is harder to read, and slap as many ads as the ad networks allow them around it and then throw up exit intent banners and crypto-mining javascript.

Now just a normal content farm feels like a breath of fresh air when we deal with those garbage sites as alternatives.

[int_19h]

Way back when they first started, they used to have content that was outright blatantly wrong and dangerous if followed. It's definitely much better in that respect now.

[wyclif]

This is correct. They haven't been treading water. They have consciously tried hard to edit out the flagrantly incorrect content that used to be on the site.

[rchaud]

It's not a content farm. That would be sites like dev.to that put out tons of unstructured blog posts from all and sundry.

W3schools is refreshing specifically because its content is all tutorial-based, they aren't any paywalls or dickbars insisting you subscribe by email.