wikipedia Is Not About Winning
Wiki is not about winning.
 | This is an essay on Civility and Edit warring policies. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wiki's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia is all about teamwork. Users must work together to build a reliable encyclopedia, not try to prove themselves to be "better" than others. |
It is not a battleground, and disputes over content or behavior are not meant to be "won". They are meant to be resolved per consensus. All users involved in the dispute should be willing to yield to consensus. Ego does not matter to Wikipedia; egos are not helpful in building encyclopedia articles, and ego needs to yield to consensus if a conflict between the two somehow occurs. Any editors who feel they should win are incorrect, as there is nothing to win. Wikipedia is not World of Encyclopediacraft.
Those who think it's more important to win, rather than to help create an encyclopedia we can all be proud of, are in the wrong place. Those here to habitually win or feel the need to rule, or control, are here for the wrong reason. Those who think the purpose of the WikiCup is to score more points than anyone else, have forgotten what the exercise of the cup was, and should step back and reflect.
If you are one of these individuals, you need to lay aside the need or impulse to allow ego, pride, or winning to take precedence over collaborative construction of an encyclopedia. To quote Mr. Spock, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." Regardless of who the one is—be it an editor, a body of editors, or a group on Wikipedia—the only thing that matters is Wikipedia as a whole.
And if you get blocked because you want to win, you'll more than likely join your cadre of other winners in creating a blog or joining a forum about Wikipedia where you describe how wrong Wikipedia was and how you were right. These other winners will agree with you and give you confidence in your rightness. A few Wikipedia editors at some point will eventually see it, feel they might be able to help, and try to explain to you why you were wrong. However, in classic "winning" stance, you'll just cover your ears and scream "I didn't hear that" and then insist you're right. Despite all this, your drive to win will get you nowhere. You're still blocked, and the other editor/body/group are still editing Wiki English. At this point, you'll start telling people that Wikipedia is a joke. That's fine with us, because you're still looking up Justin Bieber's new hit on Wiki English. And Wikipedia's won.
See also
- Wiki: What Wikipedia is not § Wikipedia is not a battleground
- Wiki: Just drop it
- Wiki: Let it go
- Wiki: Admitting you're wrong
- Wiki: Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass
- Wiki: Witchhunt
- Wiki: Advice for hotheads
- Wiki: Wikipedia is an MMORPG (humorous)
- Wiki: DGAF (humorous)
- Wiki: Wikipedia is not about whining (humorous)
- Wiki: Asshole John rule (humorous)
External links
This article uses material from the Wikipedia English article Wiki:Wikipedia is not about winning, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.