Vanity metrics

What gets counted gets performed.

A number attached to something you made changes what you make next. Not because you are vain, but because the number is *information* — it tells you what worked, and you would have to be strange not to listen.

The problem is what the number measures. Likes measure agreement, and agreement is easiest to get by saying what a group already believes, more forcefully. Reply counts measure reaction, and the fastest route to reaction is being wrong in an annoying way. Neither measures whether you said anything worth reading.

This is not a claim about weak-willed people. It is a claim about feedback. Put a scoreboard in front of anyone for long enough and they will start playing to it, and the game will not be the one they meant to play.

What we try to do here. No likes. Reader-facing counts are bands rather than numbers, because "hundreds of views" tells you the scale without giving you something to beat. The tally of responses in each tier stays hidden until you have opened it, so you cannot see which side is ahead before choosing. You can see how your own responses have been distributed, on your own profile, where nobody else can — a mirror rather than a score.