Verschlimmbesserung: The Word Your Software Updates Need

boxed

We already have a word for it? "Misfeature" The opposite is the more interesting word though: hit bug. A bug/mistake/fuckup that turns out to improve the software.

Krasnol

I'd say enshitification is a good enough word. Verschlimmbesserung is not widely used these days in Germany.

levzettelin

Just from looking at the title, I feel that this talking about AI in general...

alhirzel

I would probably abbreviate that to v17g.

dwoldrich

Value is now only _extracted_. Place the acquired good into the press and smash it until all but the faintest essence remains among the mash. The squeezings are bottled and saved to pay for future _extractions_. Companies like Valve can continue largely unshittificated because they are private. Once that is no longer the case, all our game rentals will be squozen away from us.

eqvinox

It's actually a verb, "Verschlimmbesserung" is the substantivization. Base: verschlimmbessern Present conjugation: I verschlimmbesser[e], you verschlimmbesserst, he/she/it verschlimmbessert, we verschlimmbesser[e]n, (plural-)you verschlimmbessert, they verschlimmbesser[e]n Past/perfect: verschlimmbessert (e.g. "it got verschlimmbessert") Imperative: verschlimmbesser[e] (e.g. "don't verschlimmbesser that!") The [e] at the end is leftover from an older form, in the cases where I omitted it it would sound archaic to a German speaker, but in the other cases it's equivalent or may even sound better. It's also regionally different. The archaic versions kinda sound south German (Swabian, Bavarian). [ed. made some adjustments] P.S.: "Verbesserung" means improvement, "Verschlimmerung" means worsening/aggravation. The combined word is understood quite specifically though, not just as a combination of the two. It's *not* a normal case of German "paste words together", that's for nouns (you can do it with the substantivization, e.g. Donaudampfschiffverschlimmbesserungskapitän = "captain of verschlimmbessern the steam ships on the Donau", which makes little sense of course). It's not identical to enshittification either, the latter (to me at least) implies intention; verschlimmbessern you can (and probably often will) do by accident.

OptionOfT

I usually relate this to people chasing good reviews at work. Maintaining a system and keeping it bug-free doesn't get people promoted. Doing something large, inventing a bunch of metrics, and showing that you improve on those metrics does.

arjan_sch

What about "worseprovement"

345t36g5g35gt5

https://www.sandpile.org/x86/opc_enc.htm#:~:text=Verschlimmb...

grishka

The modern tech industry is fundamentally broken, the incentive structure is wrong. No one even knows how to ship finished software any more. Everything's a perpetual beta now. It makes me really sad.

devindotcom

>attempted improvement that only makes things worse Unless I'm mistaken, Russian has a wonderful idiom for this: "bear job"

OroPla

German here. A "Verschlimmbesserung" is something that makes one part better and another part worse. If it only makes things worse you don't need a German word for it, you can just call it worse. For things that were intended good, but ended up bad, there's an English idiom: the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

jakzurr

The painting "restoration" at the end of the article is hilarious! (OMG I hope it's just a joke.)

WesolyKubeczek

„Verschlimbesserung” is what your spouse thinks about each of your improvements to the home automation setup, or, indeed, the whole idea of home automation.

6c696e7578

Office 2003 is a terrible example, office is a product that deliberately makes one part worse on each "upgrade" so that the consumer has a reason to upgrade to another release.

shevy-java

"It is called Verschlimmbesserung: an attempted improvement that only makes things worse." Hmmm. So, the literal transation would be: "Verschlimm" - worsen, negative, step back. "Besserung" - improvement, getting better than before. So, I would translate it as "an effort to improve something but actually making it worse in the process". There is an old video clip in german about this, actually; I think it was from Loriot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhj1xhv3rZI Video quality is bad, there are probably better ones but it has english subtitles. The idea here is basically the guy tries to improve something, but in the end kind of causes the whole room to become devastated. That's kind of Verschlimmbesserung: meaning to do well, but failing to do so and causing more harm than good. (Also in the comments people connect this to Friedrich Merz; the guy is really losing popular support by the minute now. Just recently where he was unhappy how real people ask him critical questions.)

BrenBarn

It's not totally clear from the examples given, but I feel like in some cases these changes aren't a genuine effort to improve things. They're just a sort of cycle of changing things to chase fads or look busy.

mjcohen

The Reason Foundation has a series of Youtube videos about things that were done with good intentions but ended up making things worse.

gnarlouse

Does that mean Verbesserschlimmung is "improving things for nothing" because the same can be said of AI.