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A comment on GitHub is going down almost every day around the same time. Parent comment

Re:GitHub is going down almost every day around the same time by JadeNB on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @10:05AM (#35887559)
> When the metric becomes the goal, people will game the metric in order to avoid punishment and/or reap the rewards.

Goodhart's law!

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Re:GitHub is going down almost every day around the same time by bheadmaster on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @10:14AM (#35887685)
Exactly. I always forget its name tho.

The book "The Tyranny of Metrics" by Jerry Muller talks about this phenomenon in depth, giving many historical examples of metrics making systems worse instead of better. Very good read, I'd recommend it to anyone.

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Re:GitHub is going down almost every day around the same time by JadeNB on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @10:15AM (#35887704)
> Exactly. I always forget its name tho.

Me too! Fortunately, Google was smart enough to turn it up from "law about metrics".

> The book "The Tyranny of Metrics" by Jerry Muller talks about this phenomenon in depth, giving many historical examples of metrics making systems worse instead of better. Very good read, I'd recommend it to anyone.

Thanks! I'll have a look.

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