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Revision as of 07:56, 12 February 2008 by Jhony (talk | contribs) ({{Reflist}})(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) | This page documents an English Misplaced Pages behavioral guideline. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page. | Shortcuts |
All Misplaced Pages users have the right to leave; the Misplaced Pages community will typically accord the right to vanish to users in good standing who exercise their right to leave.
Vanishing is the act of disassociating the identity of a user account from the identity of its owner, and typically involves:
- changing the username of the account,
- replacing references to the former username with references to the replacement username,
- deleting the account's user page and subpages, and
- posting a brief note indicating that the account owner has left Misplaced Pages and asking that people not refer to the account by its former username.
Vanishing is not a right in the strict sense of the word; rather, it is a courtesy extended by the Misplaced Pages community to make it easy for users to exercise their right to leave. Sometimes the community will not extend the courtesy: for example, if the user is not actually leaving, or if the user is not in good standing. Note also that the Wikimedia Foundation does not guarantee that an account's username will be changed on request.
- The account must have made fewer than 200,000 edits. This is a technical limitation in the rename tool, not a policy limitation.
What vanishing is not
Vanishing is not for users who are not exercising their right to leave. However, users who are not leaving are nevertheless free to request a change of username at any time.
The deletion of personally identifiable information about users (such as a phone number or a street address) is not vanishing, and users do not need to leave in order for this information to be deleted; such information can be deleted on request, provided it is not needed for administrative purposes, which are generally limited to dealing with site misuse issues.