Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not about winning

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Wikipedia is about teamwork, not winning.
Delivering a checkmate is not the ultimate goal in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is not about winning. 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 Wikipedia. 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 Wikipedia. And Wikipedia's won.

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