What is dev.to for?
source link: https://dev.to/sroehrl/what-is-devto-for-4koa
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Lately there has been an influx of certain kinds of posts on dev.to that we should probably talk about:
Uneducated opinion pieces
Before I describe what kind of articles I am referring to, let's first clarify what dev.to enabled and what - in my opinion - should not be jeopardized: The absence of gate-keeping, which destroyed the vibe of many other platforms, communities, etc.
However, this inclusiveness has particular dangers that have met a threshold recently. What I am referring to are posts that seem to be driven by a "learn by explaining it" approach and that are often simply too dangerous to leave uncommented. Way too often a mode of speech is used that would lead the beginner to believe that an expert is sharing advice while completely wrong or misleading statements are picked up and quoted. This has become so bad that I find people citing these sources and therefore unwillingly propagate misinformation similar to the false-news phenomenon in the political realm. Additionally, these articles tend to state opinion as fact. In my opinion, it is relatively easy to avoid mixing opinion with facts through language in our field as we only apply established technology.
So what's the call to action?
The question is what this community should do to avoid becoming a heap of nonsense or half-truths rather than a source of actual knowledge, given the understandable fact that many learners aren't able to distinguish between transfer of knowledge and confident nonsense.
Are you expecting the same, or is this observation based on my personal feed? Thoughts?
Discussion (5)
1) May I know what's is your solution to it?
2) My suggestion is to either ask to be the trusted user or tag moderator to flag those articles that you see is against the community guidelines by modding for your own tag or to report it.
3) For articles that you disagree with you are entitled to not read or leave a comment to help I'm sure they will appreciate it when it's coming from a positive gentle nudge.
4) For moderating the articles, there are different ways to combat fake news and unfortunately there is no single silver bullet to do it. So for dev.to they came up with using trusted users and tag moderator plus another dev.to staff to flag out or remove these articles that is against the community guidelines.
If this were easy we would have figured it out by now when the news was first created in the printing press or other community. I'm more of a laissez-faire mod for dev.to but under a specific community guideline.
Well, the type of articles I am referring to are usually not violating community guidelines. And I am also not talking about articles I disagree with as in having a different opinion on things. I am referring to objectively wrong statements that distort understanding for the intended audience. Since I don't want to out anyone in particular, I will construct an example:
"Since JavaScript is a compiled language, it is way faster than node. This is why you should always call your token-request from the client"
These kind of misconceptions aren't harmless as they can mislead beginners to actions that potentially harm their livelihood or endanger data integrity of users. While this is an extreme and constructed example, I commonly find comparable examples. Combined with the attire of an article of an industry professional rather than a random reddit comment or similar.
As for my personal solution: I don't know, that's why I am asking. What I currently do is to comment in the hope to spark correction. But the success of that is questionable.
To me it's more like a catch 22 like for example "to get a job you need experience to do it but there's no way to gain experience without a job."
For me, i believe there's always a option of writing articles by giving your own perspective on why is this is wrong. With your own personal experience in working on it or citing it from other sources. No one is gonna stop you in writing and explain these misconceptions in fact, others might appreciate it as your offering a comparative view and have the readers to make their own decisions on how it is best implemented.
Plus a single misconception will affect livehood or endanger data integrity of users. Then won't this serve to be a better example as a learning experience for the person who uses that article or the writer?
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I think the hard part would be that we have to have more people engage articles to combat them. Not simply to disregard what they find nonsensical. I at least find that to be my problem. Instead of jumping into the comments to engage with the author and challenging their thoughts, I tend to think "well best to avoid this one," and move on.
Not sure if that's other peoples problems, but I think more engagement might help. We as a community have driven this content, we also need to put in the same effort on commenting. It might help people reconsider their opinions and what they put on here.
Yes, I think generally you are right. The challenge is always - at least for me - to find the right balance between making it clear that there are issues with the accuracy of the content while not being unnecessarily discouraging.
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