konradcinkusz Metric ethics: measuring work without measuring people
Read references/METRIC-ETHICS.md before applying any of this.
That file is the standard; everything below it is a summary to help you decide
whether this skill applies and to check your work afterwards.
Reference-architecture principles: P14.
What this standard covers
- Anti-goals go at the top, and are enforced by architecture
- Every pressurable metric carries its counter-metric
- No number leaves without its confidence
- Heuristics about people are report-only
- The unit of evaluation is the artifact, never the person
Failure modes
| Symptom | Cause |
|---|---|
| A score intended as a diagnostic appears in a performance conversation | The unit of evaluation is the person, or a per-person view exists for someone to sort (§5, §1) |
| A metric improves steadily while the underlying outcome does not | The pressurable metric shipped without a counter-metric, so the cheapest way to move it is the degenerate one (§2) |
| A counter-metric exists and nobody looks at it | It is reported beside rather than blended into the same component, so consulting it is optional (§2) |
| Two scores are compared and the comparison is meaningless | Confidence or sample size is not carried with the number (§3) |
| A sentiment heuristic ends up driving a decision | It was inside the composite at a low weight rather than outside it entirely — and a weight is one config change from non-zero (§4) |
| The README's anti-goals are cited in an argument and lose | They were prose with nothing in the architecture behind them (§1) |
Checklist
- Anti-goals are stated near the top of the README, not in a footer
- At least one anti-goal is enforced by an architectural absence — a view that does not exist — rather than by policy alone
- Every pressurable metric has a named degenerate strategy and a counter-metric that catches it
- The counter-metric is blended into the same composite component, not reported beside it
- Confidence or sample size travels with every exported score, in the same payload
- The documentation says how to read a score/confidence pair
- Heuristics about human state live outside the scoring engine entirely, not inside at zero weight
- The unit of evaluation is an artifact — session, request, change, run — and never a person
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