- Deny contributors the reputation they worked for -- Community Wiki posts deny the original poster the ability to accumulate rep, which in some cases can be be seen as unfair.
- Allow others to edit an individual's posts too soon -- Community Wiki posts force the original poster to allow a large segment of the community to edit their contributions, which may be contrary to their wishes or expectations, particularly when the post is converted by one of the automated mechanisms.
- Confusingly still award badges -- Community Wiki posts still accumulate badges for their originators, which confuses the issue of whether they are really selfless contributions to the community or not.
- Punish contributors who improve their posts with many edits -- Posts are forced into community wiki after ~6 edits, which can be seen as unfair by those who are diligent about imrpovingimproving their contributions, and which some have alleged can lead to gaming of the system.
- Discourage asking questions which are too popular -- Threads are forced into community wiki after a large number of answers, which can be seen as an incentive to ask questions which are just popular enough to gain rep, but not so popular as to get too many answers.
- Can't be switched back -- The switch to community wiki is permanent, users who unknowingly or accidentally switch their post to CW cannot undo their actions and may be disappointed at their lost opportunity to gain rep.
- Discourage potential answers -- Some participants feel that having a Community Wiki question discourages potential answers, because answerers can choose to participate instead on questions where they have the possibility of earning reputation.
- Are demanded by some users when the contributor may not agree -- Some participants feel "bullied" into switching to community wiki mode when they do not agree with the opinions of those who think their post should be voluntarily switched.
- Are seen as a "free pass" to post useless junk -- Others feel that rather than calling for some content to be marked as CW to gain acceptance, that such content should be disallowed entirely rather than permitted by virtue of being CW.