I know, I know, many people have talked about, and hated on listicles here on DEV many times.

But to be completely honest, they're some of the most annoying and un-creative articles you can come across. Most of them are useless or offer very little value apart from a collection of X or Y things, or are just cheap marketing. And you can't escape them it seems... They're also bad for beginners, making them feel like they MUST read them in order to progress as developers. And that's not good.

Listicles are one of the reasons I left DEV for half a year or so. And after coming back it seems it's even worse than before. Maybe the rise of AI is making it even easier to create them.

I really like this platform. I've been an active member of DEV for many years, have posted numerous articles and have consumed many more. I've read some of the best articles here, and engaged in some of the most interesting discussions and conversations.

And i know I'm not the only one that dislikes listicles, or even stopped using DEV because of them. This makes me sad, because great articles get lost between all the listicles.

But I think it could be fixed quite simply.

I want to bring up a possible solution to the table, which might've been already suggested, but in case it hasn't, here it is.

The idea is not to prevent creating listicles, but a way for people who dislike them to hide them from their feed. People who want to see them, can. People who want to create them, can. And people who don't want to see them, can.

The idea is to "force" listicles to have a tag listicle or something like that. So that we can hide it from the feed like we hide any other tag.

Forcing it could be done by the guidelines and mods I guess...

Or maybe it can be algorithmically done in code or using AI 🤷

Just a little idea!