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Gaming the system

From Wikitruth

[edit] What is "Gaming the System"?

It's your move.

Gaming the System means, simply, using the rules, policies and procedures of a system against itself for purposes outside what these rules were intended for. Most of the time, a set of rules will be put in place towards a simple goal. The goal might be to prevent innocents from being harassed to preventing wasted time covering well-tread (and decided-upon) ground. Unfortunately, when a system puts too many rules in place, makes them too vague, or otherwise fails to know the consequences of these rules, people who study the rules closely can then use this massive (often contradictory) ruleset to play the "game" their own, unexpected way.

[edit] An Example: Reverting another person's work

For example, say that there is a limit on how many times you can undo changes to an article in an online encyclopedia. This limit would be put in place to save time and energy, by saying that you can't just undo someone else's work forever, no matter how many times they are willing to change it back. So you put in a rule that says "we will not allow undoing of an article more than three times in a row." Each undoing is called a "Revert", so you have a "No Three Reversions Rule".

But this rule means that if someone writes something, and another person undoes their work for no good reason, and then the two begin to battle, it's merely a matter of how long before an administrative person wanders into the fight, before all changes by both parties are stopped. By "gaming the system", either the "no good reason" person, the original writer, or even the "administrator" can seem to be following this rule, but in fact be using this limit to get what they want changed out.

With us? A little dizzy? Well, that's where "gaming the system" is so effective; by getting involved with the rules of the "game" to such a deep level, your trickery is quickly lost under a pile of switchbacks, points of order and subterfuge. If it sounds like politics, it is! A lot of evil stuff happens in the world under the guise of "just following the rules".

To combat this, a lot of "what ifs" and "don't be so hard-set" lines start appearing in the rules. These are supposed to make things better, but they end up making things worse. The reason is that there are so many different opinions as to what a rule ends up being, there's enough "wiggle room" to make them mean anything. Just browse over the Wikipedia entry for the "3RR" (three reversions rule) and you see a pile of exceptions, interpretations, and clarifications, the result of so many different hands touching the rule until it is rendered into meaninglessness. The rule ends up being whatever we want it to be. And "Gaming the System" results.

[edit] How do you prevent Gaming of the System?

Believe it or not, a stronger central authority fixes more of this problem than anything else. This may sound like something against the goals of Wikipedia, but currently Jimbo Wales or Danny will step in and apply rules against the system as they need to: hard, fast rules with no appeal that are permanent. These are called Wikipedia Office Decisions. They make total sense: the people who are running the system get to make choices. But because Wikipedia falsely makes it sound like everyone has a say, these moves look like dictators running roughshod on the People.

Over time, Wikipedia's central authority will make rules more hard and fast. But until then, we remind you that the only way to win against a gamed system is not to play.