Talk:Cobra effect

"Historical event" ?
I'm not sure this term should be included in the article, unless the term is actually derived from an historical event. If it is, it should be possible to source it - so we can have the name of the "British Governor", the province in which it occurred, the date of the incident, etc. However, as seems more likely to me, the event is fictitious, we shouldn't use language that seems to indicate otherwise. Tevildo (talk) 22:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for beating me to this. Even though the origin story is now sourced, "A British governor" should be identified and given appropriate credit. -Verdatum (talk) 19:18, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * In fact, only in the German Wikipedia it was a British Governor. In other sources there is spoken about the British government, autorities, and so on. I think I will change it simply into Government. -- Grochim (talk) 06:54, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Good sources?
I would feel better if there was at least one legitimate historical source for this story. After weeding out double references, what is left seem to be sources that like the story, but do not tell where they got it from. --Sarefo (talk) 22:08, 12 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Indeed. Here it is "the Indian goverment". If such a policy was ever implemented on an economically significant scale (which the story implies it was, it should have gone down to H.M. Records. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:57, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

need book cite with authors bio
In the present article "(1938–2009)" is given for the author of a book; in the lead paragraph, the date of the book is more relevant. If something more could be said about the book in the article body, then his birthdate could put there. Otherwise, it belongs at most in the citation. Is there a citation style or template which can do this, so "(1938–2009)" can be included in the citation link? 107.19.186.143 (talk) 01:26, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Software engineering
The phenomena was first documented in the development of OS/360 for the IBM System/360 mainframe. Bug fixes reached a point of equilibrium: fixing some number of bugs only introduced new different bugs. The guys who documented this were Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month and Barry Boehm in his early software engineering work. And to this day the descendent OS (System Z,and all others) still aren't bug-free. 2601:9:3404:2D00:21B:63FF:FE04:49C4 (talk) 19:36, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

What exactly does this term mean?
Does this term mean what the article says it means, i.e. "an attempted solution to a problem [that] makes the problem worse" (emphasis added)? If so, no examples are provided other than the putative source, i.e. the cobras. What happened with the rats in Vietnam did not make the problem worse as no new rats were created, it just failed to solve the problem. The example of OS/360 for the IBM System/360, suggested below, is not a good one. OK, so attempting to fix the bugs introduced more bugs. For that to be a cobra effect, a) more or worse bugs would have to have been created than existed before the fixes and b) leaving the bugs in the code would have to have been an acceptable course of action. The correct course of action would actually have been to work the whole code over. Reference 1 also uses the term in the sense of a solution that just doesn't work. Maybe a good example could be found in the argument that the CAFE mandate drove the creation of the minivan and SUV. --GrahamDavies (talk) 13:56, 29 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Agreed, and the Four Pests example listed now definitely does not seem like a good example. IdentityCrisis (talk) 08:41, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Car rationing in Mexico
This section references Hoy No Circula, but claims that the policy only lasted a year. The Hoy No Circula page claims the policy is still in effect and even has updated rules much later than 1990, and has no information about any "extra bought cars". There are no other references for this section.

Should this section be removed or updated? Blong42 (talk) 22:37, 16 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Indeed, the Hoy No Circula page says the policy was a temporary measure which was made permanent, not removed, in 1990. I've removed that section from the article.  Daß &thinsp;  Wölf  20:54, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Images
Is it really necessary to have two pictures of a cobra? It looks really awkward. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.152.10.192 (talk) 10:04, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Probably not. The second one was added a few days ago, and it doesn't really seem to contribute to the article. I ought to take one of them out. I guess the question is, which one do you prefer? I kind of like the close-up, myself. jp×g 03:23, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I prefer the whole-body shot but it doesn't matter - neither is necessary for the article; they're decoration more than information. Remove either. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:38, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Merge proposal
Into perverse incentive. The two articles describe the same behavior, and even link to each other while saying it is a different name for the same phenomenon. "Perverse incentive" seems to be the technical term, while "Cobra effect" appears to be an informal term. --129.7.0.56 (talk) 01:59, 16 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Support - although I'm not sure which should be the main article and which the redirect. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:22, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Support merge: I think this article should be merged into Perverse incentive and not the other way around, making this page into a redirect. DesertPipeline (talk) 10:47, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Support — Guavabutter (talk) 01:17, 29 March 2021 (UTC)