4 ms·

This way of looking at things is so corruptive. Does everything we do have to be about reputation? About our CV and how we're hired? About competition? How many

This way of looking at things is so corruptive. Does everything we do have to be about reputation? About our CV and how we're hired? About competition? How many commits does it take to compensate for that state of mind, for what it does to people? Whenever you bring those things, they only leave a scorched plain in their wake and the community is forced to move somewhere else. > One of the principles of open source is meritocracy — the best idea wins, the most commits wins, the most passing tests wins, the best implementation wins, etc. Have we learned nothing? "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." - Goodhart's law

brightball 10y ago
I haven't heard that before, but that is a great quote.
- happy-go-lucky 10y ago
  Closely related ideas: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." - Campbell's law (1976) "It is naive to try to predict the effects of a change in economic policy entirely on the basis of relationships observed in historical data, especially highly aggregated historical data." - Lucas critique (1976)
  - drivers99 10y ago
    Sounds like perverse incentives[1] in general. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
    - happy-go-lucky 10y ago
      > In Hanoi, under French colonial rule, a program paying people a bounty for each rat tail handed in was intended to exterminate rats. Instead, it led to the farming of rats. LOL. Thank you.
      - zardo 10y ago
        http://e360.yale.edu/features/perverse_co2_payments_send_flood_of_money_to_china http://e360.yale.edu/features/perverse_co2_payments_send_flo... A modern incarnation: High incentives for the destruction of a harmful chemical stimulates it's production.
      - morgante 10y ago
        France is hardly the only colonizer to experience the problems of perverse incentives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
Bartweiss 10y ago
"The most commits wins" and "the most passing tests wins" are pretty disturbing sentiments. That's not a way to write good code, it's a way to take on low-effort tasks for commit count or write 10,000 happy-path unit tests. "Best idea" and "best implementation" are fine, but that's because they're subjective. Goodhart's Law is a great thing to reference here - the only thing you can't game is "actually producing good outcomes".

brightball 10y ago

I haven't heard that before, but that is a great quote.

happy-go-lucky 10y ago
Closely related ideas: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." - Campbell's law (1976) "It is naive to try to predict the effects of a change in economic policy entirely on the basis of relationships observed in historical data, especially highly aggregated historical data." - Lucas critique (1976)
- drivers99 10y ago
  Sounds like perverse incentives[1] in general. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
  - happy-go-lucky 10y ago
    > In Hanoi, under French colonial rule, a program paying people a bounty for each rat tail handed in was intended to exterminate rats. Instead, it led to the farming of rats. LOL. Thank you.
    - zardo 10y ago
      http://e360.yale.edu/features/perverse_co2_payments_send_flood_of_money_to_china http://e360.yale.edu/features/perverse_co2_payments_send_flo... A modern incarnation: High incentives for the destruction of a harmful chemical stimulates it's production.
    - morgante 10y ago
      France is hardly the only colonizer to experience the problems of perverse incentives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

Bartweiss 10y ago

"The most commits wins" and "the most passing tests wins" are pretty disturbing sentiments. That's not a way to write good code, it's a way to take on low-effort tasks for commit count or write 10,000 happy-path unit tests. "Best idea" and "best implementation" are fine, but that's because they're subjective. Goodhart's Law is a great thing to reference here - the only thing you can't game is "actually producing good outcomes".