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Grzegorz Ziemonski
Grzegorz Ziemonski

Posted on

Contributing vs Dumping

One of the things that have drawn me to DEV was that it mostly consists of individuals willing to share their experience, knowledge, and discuss things.

That's in contrast to some other sites that became a dump for companies willing to advertise themselves or their products with low-quality, para-technical content.

Sadly, my today's DEV experience shows some room for improvement in this area:

This is not meant to be an attack on Octoparse or anyone else. I'd just like to feel that all members are at least trying to contribute to the community, not just using it as a means to another end.

If I'm being too harsh or shouldn't sweat over an isolated case, let me know and I'm sorry in advance!

Top comments (5)

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gabe profile image
Gabe

Agreed. What makes Dev.to great is seeing so many new posts by real individuals who are looking to either share or learn. I don't want to see large businesses dump their ads onto us forcing me to ignore half the posts on the site.

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jsrn profile image
James • Edited

I agree.

I don't like to be negative about the content that gets posted here, as there's enough negativity on other platforms, but:

  • I'm here to follow people, not companies.
  • I don't (generally) get a lot of benefit out of listicles. Life's too short to read 80 books on one subject and I don't need 30 tools to pick from, I need maybe three.

If all of your comments are advertising a platform that you're clearly affiliated and you bomb the site with a bunch of articles in one day, I think it's pretty apparent that your main motive is spreading your company name and you aren't using the platform in good faith.

I think people should absolutely be able to promote themselves and their products here, but if it's your main reason for being here, it shows, and like you, @goyo , I'd prefer that it doesn't become the norm.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Yep, this account is getting banned. This was very obviously spam.

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daemoen profile image
Marc Mercer

Fortunately, each of us as users has the ability to bring this to DevTo's attention. I did the same today with someone I found doing something 'not against the CoC', but relatively questionable. DevTo is a relatively small team, so expecting them to be able to police everything is unreasonable, so then, it falls to each of us to assist as we are able to, by filing reports when we see things. We're like the 'neighborhood watch' xD

The one suggestion I would make -- Don't make it a 'public' ordeal, because you're ironically just helping that individual/organization out by making it even more focused in everyone's attention. Instead, send an email to yo@dev.to and they can investigate and take action behind the scenes.

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emgodev profile image
Michael

I'm with you. I have seen some of this lately and it is not the reason I am here. I want to hear from developers, people who don't know how to 'pitch', in all fairness. Normal people who share what they learn, or talk about what they love.