Wikipedia:Gaming the system

Gaming the system means deliberately misusing Wikipedia rules for personal advantage at the expense of other users or the Wikipedia community.

Examples

Gaming the use of policies and guidelines

  1. Bad-faith wikilawyering – arguing the word of policy to defeat the principles of policy.
    Example: Posting a neutral notice that does not violate the guideline on canvassing, while using a different set of notifications to lure a partisan audience to view that neutral notice.
  2. Playing policies against each other.
    Example: Saying you refuse to remove content that violates the policy on verifiability, because that content is protected by the policy that "Wikipedia is not censored".
    Example: Telling another user that by reverting your vandalism edits, they are violating the 3-revert rule. (Vandalism is an exception to the 3-revert rule.)
  3. Selectively "cherry-picking" wording from a policy (or cherry-picking one policy to apply, but willfully ignoring others) to support a view that does not in fact match or comply with policy.
    Example: Adding content that is restricted under the policy on what Wikipedia is not, while cherry-picking the words that "Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia" to evade those restrictions.
  4. Baselessly and knowingly claiming protection, justification, or support under the words of a policy, for a viewpoint or stance that actually contradicts policy.
    Example: Saying that content meets the policy on verifiability because it is cited to a source, when in fact the source is not reliable, or the content twists the source's point of view. (See WP:Neutral point of view § Due and undue weight.)
  5. Attempting to force an untoward interpretation of policy, or impose your own novel view of "standards to apply" rather than those of the community.
    Example: Presenting a Wikipedia essay that was written by a single editor as though it were a consensus policy.

Gaming the consensus-building process

  1. Stonewalling or filibustering – repeatedly pushing a viewpoint with which the consensus of the community clearly does not agree, effectively preventing a policy-based resolution.
    Example: An editor refuses to accept a change unless some condition is complied with, but it is not a condition that has any basis in Wikipedia policies or guidelines.
    Example: Editors reach a consensus, except one (or a tag team) insisting that the change sought violates some policy or other principle, in a way they cannot clearly demonstrate.
  2. Bad-faith negotiating – luring other editors into a compromise by making a concession, only to withhold that concession after the other side has compromised.
    Example: An editor negotiates a consensus to remove well-verified material from one article, because it is already covered in a second article. Afterward, the editor deletes the material from the second article.
    Example: Editors reach a consensus. The author of the final agreed-on text is supposed to post it but never does. Weeks later, a second editor tires of waiting and posts a modified version, which the first editor immediately reverts.
    Example: An editor withholds agreement to a change unless additional, more satisfactory sources are provided, but declares all the new sourcing to be unsatisfactory despite the citation work clearly fulfilling the core content policies.
  3. Removing a large addition for a minor error. If the error is minor, then fix it (or at least tag it for clean-up). Perfection is not required, and Wikipedia is built through incremental improvement.
    Example: An editor adds a paragraph of verifiable information, but it is removed entirely because of a typographical error that could easily be fixed.
    Example: An editor performs page-wide, uncontroversial copy editing and code cleanup, but another editor thinks some ostensibly minor changes subtly altered the meaning of two sentences, and so reverts several hours of work instead of just the two disputed changes.
  4. Employing gaslighting tactics – such as history rewriting, reality denial, misdirection, baseless contradiction, projection of your own weaknesses onto others, repetition, or off-topic rambling – to destabilize a discussion by sowing doubt and discord.
    Examples: Denying that you posted what you did, suggesting someone agreed to something they did not, pretending your question has not already been answered, misrepresenting what a policy actually says or means, prevaricating about the obvious meaning of a claim, or refusing to concede when your position has been disproved or rejected by consensus.
  5. Transactional politics or tit for tat – asking an editor to take an action (e.g. change their stance in a discussion) on the basis of your efforts taken elsewhere on their behalf; or suggesting that you will withhold efforts on their behalf unless they take your desired action.
    Example: An editor asks another to change their vote at RFA on the basis of prior support given or other actions taken on their behalf by the first editor.
    Example: An editor asks an admin to warn another editor for alleged POV-pushing, and hints that the first editor's pending GAN or FAC review of the admin's article may be in jeopardy if action isn't taken by the admin.

Gaming of article titles, review processes, and deletion processes

  1. Using different or variant forms or spellings of an article title.
  2. Use of sockpuppet accounts to conceal a conflict of interest.
    Example: Submitting a biography from a sockpuppet account after a previous submission has been declined because it is seen to be an autobiography.

Gaming of sanctions for disruptive behavior

  1. Mischaracterizing other editors' actions to make them seem unreasonable, improper, or deserving of sanction.
    Example: Refusing to provide a proper citation to an editor looking to verify your claim, and accusing the editor of being disruptive for making repeated requests. Citations should be accurate so that other editors may verify them.
  2. "Walking back" a personal attack to make it seem less hostile than it was, rather than apologizing.
    Example: An editor responds to a disagreement by saying, "You're obviously wrong, wrong, wrong. Did you even pass 9th-grade history?" Later, they defend this statement as a good-faith question about the other editor's education.
  3. "Borderlining" – habitually treading the edge of policy breach or engaging in low-grade policy breach, to make it hard to prove misconduct.
    Example: An editor never violates the three-revert rule, but takes several months to repeatedly push the same edits over the objections of multiple editors.
  4. Retribution – deliberately reverting an editor's edits in one article in retaliation for a dispute in another.
    Example: Editor A reverts an edit made by Editor B because it did not adhere to a neutral point of view and they did not provide a reliable source. Editor B starts a discussion on the talk page in which Editor A participates, but the discussion fails to generate consensus. Later on, Editor B reverts a well-sourced, neutral addition that Editor A made, saying it did not comply with the Manual of Style.
  5. Playing victim – violating a rule and at the same time claiming that others are in violation of the same or a closely related rule. Also known as hypocrisy.
    Example: Editor A posts uncivil comments while at the same time accusing Editor B of uncivil behavior, demanding sanctions and citing policies that Editor A clearly violates.

Baseless legalisms

Because Wikipedia is not a court of law, legal procedures and terms do not apply to Wikipedia. Typically, wikilawyering raises procedural or evidentiary points in a manner similar to court trials, often using flawed legal reasoning. Wikilawyering often serves to dodge an issue or even prevent a workable solution from being made. For example, it is often impossible to definitely establish the actual user behind a set of sockpuppets, and it is not a defense that none of the sockpuppets which emerge were named in the request for arbitration.