"Upstat" vs. "Downstat"

[GreyLensman]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the 1970's there was a guy in GO.WW named Donat Perboner. Every week his stat would increase by one unit. He was always in Normal Op. He controlled his output and stat report to ensure that it only went up by the minimum amount.

After a while anyone with a consistently Normal Op graph was referred to as a "Donat Perboner" graph.

Per -boner. Heh. Heh . Heh. You said...

Your statistic was supposed to go up, period. There was this nebulous thing called power (which never seemed to actually be available) where of course no one would expect you to actually do more... I never saw anyone actually reach power.

There were two ways to approach this - one was to manage your statistic ala Donat Perboner. You produced, and then around Tuesday you managed your completions or your reg GI or your folders filed. You would be "upstat" by the numbers.

Or, and many posts this wasn't really a choice, but just the way it was - the only control you had was to crash the stat for a single week, not too much, not enough to be in lower than say Danger. And then bring it back up, one unit at a time.

This game sucked.

[GreyLensman]

Seems to me the problem with stats $cn style is when they become the be all end all of any activity .The other problem is that some things are easy to measure like income sales etc and others are harder like happyness spirituality etc. It also seems that it is a bit like standardized testing in public schools where things that may be most important like critical thinking real wisdom and others are not and can not be measured by that type of test The trap comes when the stat becomes everything and you stop seeing the "Big Picture"

That's exactly it. You get that which you place peoples' attention on. You get "statistics" that go up. Not products.

You also get a Thursday-at-2 to Thursday-at-2 mentality that can't plan beyond a week-to-week existence. Long term steady growth would have been a better factor than any unit like a week.

[Dulloldfart]

There was an FESer at SH in the 70s called, I think, John Nixon. His stat was # hours FESed. So he would work his regular hours, and at the end of the week would have made 56 hours or whatever. Being upstat, he would take Saturday off (we would get a day off every two weeks if our stats were up).

The next week, since he had missed a day, his stat would be, say, 48 hours. But it wasn't his libs week, so he didn't care.

The following week, having the benefit of the extra day, he would make 56 hours. Bingo! Upstat. He'd get the day off.

Etcetera. Smart guy.

Paul

[Idle Morgue]

I can see that being "stat" driven has really helped this organization expand by EPIC proportions. Instead of -0- public coming in, they have 1 new person come in during the week but he was an undercover journalist that wants to know how this Ideal MORGUE gets away with their criminal behavior.

A VERY WELL DONE for "clearing" out your new Idle MORGUES!

With Love,

A Bitter DeFROCKED, APOSTATE!

[Rene Descartes]

There was an FESer at SH in the 70s called, I think, John Nixon. His stat was # hours FESed. So he would work his regular hours, and at the end of the week would have made 56 hours or whatever. Being upstat, he would take Saturday off (we would get a day off every two weeks if our stats were up).

The next week, since he had missed a day, his stat would be, say, 48 hours. But it wasn't his libs week, so he didn't care.

The following week, having the benefit of the extra day, he would make 56 hours. Bingo! Upstat. He'd get the day off.

Etcetera. Smart guy.

Paul

Give that guy a big flunk

When he was at 48 hours he should have upped it the next week to 48 hours and 2 minutes, then to 48 hours and 3 minutes the next week.

No matter what quota was set for him he should have stuck to that and if someone berated him he could have shown the person mathematically that at a one or two minute increase a week he could be in power in about 10 years.

If the person then berated him and told he has to get to Power sooner he now has the advantage of having defined by the conversation what value the stat has to be at to be in Power.

So in a couple of weeks he gets the stat into Power and does the condition and gets a...

gets a...

gets a what?

An SP declare like all the other great producers through the years got?

Rd00

Rd00

[Lermanet_com]

That's exactly it. You get that which you place peoples' attention on. You get "statistics" that go up. Not products.

You also get a Thursday-at-2 to Thursday-at-2 mentality that can't plan beyond a week-to-week existence. Long term steady growth would have been a better factor than any unit like a week.

contrast that to: The phrase "The 7th Son", from indigenous indians who would make decisions based upon what is best for the 7th generation ahead.

Compare that to modern corporate planning for the next quarterly earnings report...

and note also that a thief ALWAYS wants it now.

[uniquemand]

[Claire Swazey]

It is very interesting how people and societies move with the times, end up with different criteria for managing their citizenry and what they'll permit vs what they won't permit.

However, I honestly believe that humans have underlying tendencies to want to do bad shit to people they don't like and to do good toward those they like or care about and that they use social mechanisms to get their way.

Some people are more constructive, logical, and enlightened than others. Those people are the ones responsible for engineering power and constructive social changes such as zero tolerance for child abuse, animal rights, end to slavery, women's suffrage, and so on. Because of the industrial age which sparked a bit of an information age (no internet but you did have newspapers and people travelling by trains and being able to convey info that much more quickly), those proposed (and subsequently enacted) changes were able to be presented to many instead of just a few. That is probably another reason for the social changes. With the advent of the internet, of course, it became even more that way.

Human nature is still the same and will always be the same. But the value of information and the availability of other opinions and suggested alternatives- those are the things that changed.

There are still people who, if they could get away with it, would deny all sorts of rights to all sorts of people. I've met some. I actually know a very nice lady who thinks that ...well, I won't invoke Godwin's law, but let's just say she surprised the hell out of me and I was kinda sad. This happens to lesser extents and degrees as well. There are people who would take away all rights of worship, citing CofS, Mormonism (that one does get mentioned a lot) cults, lesser known churches- as justificatiions.

People will always have to grapple with their own senses of territorial imperative and their own emotions. The nice thing is that we are far more connected with the other billions of people in the world than we used to be and sometimes we actually listen to them, learn, and enact reforms.

I know I'm glad the feudal system, indentures, child labor etc, are no longer legal...