Wikipedia:Asshole John rule

This is an essay on the conduct policy.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Shortcuts

This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia has too many unnecessary, fine-tuned rules for edge cases, because every system of rule-guided activity is subject to exploitation of technicalities, by people more interested in winning than being part of something. Don't exacerbate this problem.

This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous.
Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.

Related joke:

A pool player has a heart attack during a tournament and flops onto the table.
The referee rushes over and checks for a pulse. "Oh no, he's dead!"
The other player says, "Dead ... Hmm, isn't that a foul?!"
Wikipedia moral: If all you care about is winning on a technicality, you're being an AJ.

A local pool league had a nit-picky rule in its manual that seemed pointless to state, such that one might assume that someone would have to be dumb as rocks to need it spelled out for them. It was informally called "the Asshole John rule".

How it came about: Before this odd rule existed, the original wording of the simpler rules could, if willfully misinterpreted, result in an exploitable loophole under rare conditions. (Sound familiar?) A player, John, with a history of unsportsmanlike rulebook-thumping (especially to get a declared "victory" on a technicality), predictably exploited this. He was technically right, as a semantic matter, if one accepted his fallacy of equivocation about the wording. But he was clearly violating the spirit of the rules.

Rather than ever have this come up again, but without rewriting the original rule to simply be clearer, the league board just wedged in the strange, nit-picking codicil that virtually no one would think necessary, and this was nicknamed the "Asshole John rule". While the rulebook didn't call it that, players sure did. It likely irritated this John, but did have the effect of forestalling most later attempts (by anyone) at similar warping of the rules to try to mean what they were clearly not meant to. "Do you want another Asshole John rule?"

Unfortunately, this type of "institutional incivility" is only allowed and only works in something like a pool league. And adding "micro-rules" for edge cases generally doesn't work well anywhere at all.