Talk:2899: Goodhart's Law

I don't think there's anything else that could be included in the transcript, so i'm deleting the incomplete tag. if anyone has an idea to make it better, just add it. i know it seems too soon, but there's really nothing else to the comic. New editor (talk) 22:17, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

This happens all the time. For instance, a call center whose metric-turned-target is number of calls handled per hour (which sounds good in theory) is incentivised to hang up on callers, who then call back - increasing their "performance" as measured by the target, as it both decreases the time each call takes (thus making time for more calls) and increases the volume of incoming calls. Of course, the side effect is ticked-off customers heading to competitors instead. (Which often doesn't affect the call center as it's a third party.) If the metric-turned-target is getting a good survey response at the end of the call, treating the customer so badly they hang up (and thus don't take the survey) for any call that is going poorly becomes a viable way of improving the measurement of their performance. Creating good targets is HARD. 172.70.43.157 22:38, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Moderator (talk) 23:12, 26 February 2024 (UTC) Moderator (talk) 23:12, 26 February 2024 (UTC) Moderator (talk) 23:12, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

The above, by 'Moderator' appears to be a meta-joke. i.e. trying to enhance 'times signed', which of course isn't even a useful measure, at the expense of bringing anything useful to the situation. It was even done in just one edit, so didn't even increase the standard 'contributions' measure that an actual target-hitter might try to hit.

Either that or they messed up/have other machinations in mind. But I just thought I'd 'dissect the frog' for future readers. 172.70.91.165 04:19, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

The main problem with metrics is that there can be too many (everything is a metric, you're chasing targets even if just trying to be the most average and not to be an outlier) or there are too few (everything is 'boiled down' to a single figure of 'success', with no nuance available to work out why it's marked as "good" rather than "excellant ). Or both at the same time! That said, I think changing a target-system to be a less-worse-target-system is often the worst of all worlds, as every meaningful measure is changed, and/or the means to measure them are changed, all this impinging upon the actual job of work that was actually always supposed to be done, regardless... 172.70.91.165 04:19, 27 February 2024 (UTC)