Just came across this article. Back 5 years ago TDS use to be a good place to publish your work to reach a larger audience. At that point they were not highly selective which was good because it was never meant to be a full peer review process (I published my first article with them back in 2017).

There was always a degree of click-bait titles and low quality tutorial articles, but that was alright because it sorted itself out based on claps/links.

The problems seemed to start around 2021 when they brought on Ben Huberman as an "editor in chief." Despite having absolutely no technical background he seemed to think he had the ability to discern good technical writing from bad technical writing. I had my first ever article rejected by them in 2022 for "thematic reasons." This article was a very strong article that many others complimented me on. I had things published at TDS since then but I noticed having to jump through additional hoops.

I think TDS is the story of what happens when you bring in an outside editor with zero technical background to instill a false sense of rigor and prestige to what was once an open publication. Thanks for the article we should all do our part to warn others to avoid TDS in the future.