Club Penguin Fanon Wiki:Gaming the system

Gaming the system means using policies and guidelines in bad faith, to deliberately disrupt the Club Penguin Fanon Wiki and the process of communal editorship.

An editor gaming the system is seeking to use policies with bad faith, by finding within their wording, apparent justification for disruptive actions and stances that policy is clearly not at all intended to support. In doing this, the gamester separates policies and guidelines from their rightful place as a means of documenting community consensus, and attempts to use them selectively for a personal agenda.

Sometimes gaming the system is used to make a point. Other times, it is used for edit warring, or to enforce a specific non-neutral point of view. In all of these, gaming the system is an improper use of policy, and is strongly frowned upon. An appeal to policy which does not further the true intent and spirit of the policy is an improper use of that policy.

Those who game the system and in turn break rules will not be treated as mercifully as innocent offenders, as gaming the system shows intent to break the rules and be disruptive.

The meaning of 'gaming the system'
Gaming the system is a process of subversion. CPFW's policies and guidelines exist to sum up the view of the community on how Club Penguin Fanon Wiki operates, and its core principles. To attempt to use those to derail Club Penguin Fanon Wiki processes, or to claim support for a viewpoint which clearly contradicts those policies, or to attack a genuinely policy-based stance by willfully misapplying policies, is "gaming the system", a form of disruptive editing. Gaming usually involves:

In each case, individual knowledge of each policy is important. The misuse of policy, guidelines, or practice is not gaming if it is based upon a genuine mistake. Continual "gaming" is, likely, deliberate. Violating the spirit of Club Penguin Fanon Wiki's behaviour guidelines may prejudice the decisions of the editors at large.
 * Supporting a policy for some action or stance, which the user knows does not reflect the true intent and spirit of the policy, or
 * Misrepresenting policy in a way which the user knows will harm Club Penguin Fanon Wiki or its editorial environment in practice.

Examples
Examples of gaming include (but are not limited to):

1. Using loopholes that were not willingly made during the creation of the policy in question
 * This is generally referred to as arguing the word or grammatical structure of policy to defeat the spirit and intended purpose of policy.
 * "I'm only making 1-2 daily reverts to Darktan, so I'm not violating Club Penguin Fanon Wiki:Three-revert rule."

2. Spuriously claiming protection, justification or support under the words of a policy, for a viewpoint or stance which knowingly actually contradicts policy
 * For example, spuriously claiming support from no democracy or Club Penguin Fanon Wiki:Neutral point of view to prevent legitimate discussion from progressing.
 * "People are voting in RfD, even though Club Penguin Fanon Wiki isn't a democracy. This discussion should be ended immediately, and the voters in question should be punished."

3. Playing policies against each other.
 * "You cannot block me because my "multiple acts of vandalism" to USA were in good faith."

4. Relying upon the letter of policy as a defense when breaking the spirit of policy.
 * The canonical example here is the three reverts rule, which limits editors to 3 reverts in a 24 hour period. The purpose of 3RR is to quench 'revert wars'. An editor who reverts three times in a 24 hour period and once immediately the next day, or repeatedly reverts twice only in a day, may well still be sanctioned, since the spirit of 3RR, and the issue it is protecting Club Penguin Fanon Wiki against, has been breached. Blocks for more than 3 obvious vandalism reverts (such as those against a vandal repeatedly blanking a page with profanities at least 4 times in 24 hours) and other non-controversial reverts are also considered gaming the system.

5. Selectively 'cherry picking' wording from a policy (or cherry picking one policy to apply but wilfully ignoring others) to support a view which does not in fact match policy.
 * Example of cherry picking policies: demanding support for an edit because it is verifiable and cited, whilst marginalising or evading the concerns of others that it is not based upon reliable sources or fairly representing its purported view.

6. The gaming of consensus by means of sock puppetry creates a 'false consensus'.

7. 'Borderlining' - habitually treading the edge of policy breach or engaging in low-grade policy breach, in order to make it hard to actually prove misconduct.

Gaming sometimes overlaps with other policies:
 * Mis-using Club Penguin Fanon Wiki processes to put another editor in an invidious position, prove a point, or muddy the water in a dispute, can also be a form of gaming.
 * Using policies and guidelines to build (or push) a patently false case that some editor is editing in bad faith, with the 'evidence' for this itself being an obviously unreasonable bad-faith interpretation of that person's action. This is more often categorised as a breach of the policy assume good faith, and in particular, repeated unjustified "warnings" may also be viewed as uncivil.
 * If gaming is also knowingly used as a basis to impugn another editor or to mischaracterise them as bad faith editors, then this may also violate the policy of no personal attacks.

Note that actions similar to these where there is no evidence of intent to act improperly, are usually not considered gaming. The essence of gaming is the wilful or knowing misuse of policy.