Wikipedia:Courtesy vanishing
 | This page documents an English Wikipedia consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Courtesy vanishing means any user in good standing—upon leaving Wikipedia forever—may request renaming of their account; deletion or blanking of user pages; and possibly the deletion or blanking of discussions related to their conduct. This courtesy vanishing does not include the deletion of user contributions, and normally does not include the deletion of user talk pages. |
The usual way to leave Wikipedia is simply to stop editing and abandon your account. A courtesy vanishing may be implemented when a user in good standing decides not to return and for whatever reason wishes to make their contributions harder to find or to remove their association with their edits. When there is no administrative need to retain the information, a permanently departing user may request that a wide range of user pages, and other pages that affect them alone, be deleted on departure. The user account is renamed;
Courtesy vanishing is discretionary and may be refused. It is not intended to be temporary. It is not a way to
As all contributions are licensed under the
Vanishing from Wikipedia
Vanishing typically involves the following:
- A global renamer or steward responds to a rename request and renames the account to, for example, "Renamed user 157yagz5r48a5f1a1f".
- References in the history of pages to the former username are replaced with references to the replacement username. Note that signatures (on user talk pages, article talk pages and project discussion pages) will not be changed, and will, by default, be redirected to the new user name. You can ask for this redirect to be removed.
- The account's user page and subpages are deleted. User talk pages are rarely deleted, and may be undeleted by community consensus.
- This action will be global due to account unification.
How to request a courtesy vanishing
First, consider whether you really want to vanish, or whether a simple retirement or clean start might be more appropriate. Vanishing is a last resort and should only be used when you wish to stop editing forever and also to hide as many of your past associations as possible.
If you decide to vanish, you may wish to blank or delete your user page and any subpages in your userspace. To request deletion of any existing pages, add the {{ template. Note that your user talk pages will normally not be deleted except in rare cases (see below).
{{Retired
If you wish to take advantage of courtesy vanishing, you can use one of the following methods to make your request:
- The best way is to visit Special:GlobalRenameRequest to access the rename request interface. Requests made this way will be processed by global renamers or stewards. Please specify "request to vanish" in the reason field; your requested username should be of the form "Renamed user nnnnnnnnnn" replacing n with random characters.
- If your request is particularly sensitive, you may contact the stewards via e-mail and ask that your account be renamed, giving "request for courtesy vanishing" as the subject. Please use the contact interface at VRTsystem that can be seen by anyone with access to the renamers email queue. This is restricted to current renamers, stewards and Wikimedia Foundation staff.
There is a
If you have questions about vanishing, or have concerns that might be addressable by a less permanent method, you may want to contact a
What vanishing is not
- Vanishing is not a way to start over with a fresh account. When you request a courtesy vanishing, it is understood that you will not be returning. If you want to start over, please follow the directions at Clean start instead of (not in addition to) this page. If you make a request to vanish, and then start over with a new account, and are then discovered, the vanishing procedure may be reversed, and your old and new accounts may be linked.
- Vanishing is not a way to avoid criticism, sanctions, or other negative attention, unless you really mean to leave permanently. As such, it might not be extended to users who have been disruptive, who leave when they lose the trust of the community, or when they are blocked or banned.
- It is not a way for accounts affiliated with organizations or interests opposed to the Wikipedia community to erase documentation that they edited Wikipedia. This could happen when an account associated with a business, for example, is criticized on their user talk page for the way they edited Wikipedia.
- Vanishing is not the best way to remove personal information that you may have accidentally revealed about yourself, especially if you want to continue editing. See the page on Oversight instead.
- If you want to change your username, users in good standing are free to request a change of username at any time. All contributions made under the old username will be re-attributed to the new username, including deleted contributions, preserving the edit history.[a]
Deletion of user talk pages
While user pages and subpages may be deleted, the deletion of established users' talk pages is invariably controversial, and is the rare exception, not the rule. This is because user talk pages, unlike other user pages, have largely been written by other editors. User talk pages should not be speedy deleted by admins. Users who wish to delete user talk pages should consult a
See also
- Wikipedia:Anonymity
- Wikipedia:Changing username
- Wikipedia:Clean start
- meta:Right to vanish
- Wikipedia:Retiring
- Wikipedia:Sleeper account
- Template:Userbox Ex-Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians
- phab:T8397