I think what this really boils down to is working out what content you, as the user, wants to see and how Dev can better filter out things of no interest.
As you've mentioned there are lots of top 10 lists, which don't really interest me either but are really popular, so some people out there must like them. We'd be remiss to blanket ban people from writing articles like that.
Something I imagine could be done is making it more clear at the time of posting that people can set an experience level for their post and also have experience level more heavily impact what is seen.
On the topic of junior devs making lots of posts. Before I was a dev I was writing posts on Dev and without them I wouldn't be a dev now. Honestly they weren't that interesting but they gave me purpose. The few people that came back and read them each week and left comments gave me the confidence I needed to change career.
The way I see it Dev is a resource, a way to share information. You can share that information by posting a post or by helping someone who's learning in the comments of their post and I don't mind doing that.
That all being said I would agree that post quality is dipping, as you rightly say, this because there are now lots of people on the platform but I'm not really sure raising the bar of entry is the solution.
As I said earlier better feed curation would be my preference, maybe things like this
a see less like this option
enforced experience level
filter by like rate (views to likes ratio)
Another solution that might work, this is a half baked idea that came to me as I typed so it might not go anywhere. There could be a "following only" feed which only shows posts from people you follow (just like a twitter feed). Users could then endorse posts, when they endorse a post it would be like a retweet, you see who endorsed it and it would be on your feed.
This would be a new sort of feed and the old feeds could still exist as "Discover" feeds. I imagine if you don't follow very many people it could show you posts from people that are similar (with a message saying similar to Tom Jones).
I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
I agree that we shouldn't try to "raise the bar". When people are starting out, it's great for them to have a place they can post and find their voice, and as far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter if what they're saying has already been said.
However, we do need a way to filter things so that's not dominating people's feeds. And while meta-articles and lists can have value, most of the ones here are just churn.
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We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
I think what this really boils down to is working out what content you, as the user, wants to see and how Dev can better filter out things of no interest.
As you've mentioned there are lots of top 10 lists, which don't really interest me either but are really popular, so some people out there must like them. We'd be remiss to blanket ban people from writing articles like that.
Something I imagine could be done is making it more clear at the time of posting that people can set an experience level for their post and also have experience level more heavily impact what is seen.
On the topic of junior devs making lots of posts. Before I was a dev I was writing posts on Dev and without them I wouldn't be a dev now. Honestly they weren't that interesting but they gave me purpose. The few people that came back and read them each week and left comments gave me the confidence I needed to change career.
The way I see it Dev is a resource, a way to share information. You can share that information by posting a post or by helping someone who's learning in the comments of their post and I don't mind doing that.
That all being said I would agree that post quality is dipping, as you rightly say, this because there are now lots of people on the platform but I'm not really sure raising the bar of entry is the solution.
As I said earlier better feed curation would be my preference, maybe things like this
Another solution that might work, this is a half baked idea that came to me as I typed so it might not go anywhere. There could be a "following only" feed which only shows posts from people you follow (just like a twitter feed). Users could then endorse posts, when they endorse a post it would be like a retweet, you see who endorsed it and it would be on your feed.
This would be a new sort of feed and the old feeds could still exist as "Discover" feeds. I imagine if you don't follow very many people it could show you posts from people that are similar (with a message saying similar to Tom Jones).
I agree that we shouldn't try to "raise the bar". When people are starting out, it's great for them to have a place they can post and find their voice, and as far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter if what they're saying has already been said.
However, we do need a way to filter things so that's not dominating people's feeds. And while meta-articles and lists can have value, most of the ones here are just churn.