Right to vanish

The Right to Vanish is a long standing right of any user on Wikimedia projects. It means that under certain conditions, a range of material testifying to your actions and existence on the project may (at your request) be removed or obscured. Right to vanish applies typically to two circumstances:

• Personal protection - You have personally identifying information on publicly visible pages on the project, or linked to your username, or there is genuine risk of off-wiki harassment, or unacceptable on-wiki stalking, and you wish to avoid such problems.
• Permanent departure - You plan to permanently leave a project, without changing your mind in future.

Note that the extent to which your activities will be removed or obscured is limited. The details are described below. Also note that despite its name, the Right to Vanish is made available by goodwill of the Foundation and its projects and exists only as a social courtesy.

About Right to vanish

Status of Right to vanish

Right to Vanish is essentially, a social courtesy extended to all participants in general, and should be seen as such. It does not imply that all information will be removed. Legally all information is retainable since it has been made available under the GFDL, and in practice much information cannot, or will not, be removed due to the practical disruption and difficulty involved. Users should be aware therefore that the Right to Vanish is in practice, fairly limited, and not robust against serious inquiry.

Information covered by the Right

A user claiming their Right to Vanish may usually expect the following matters to be potentially considered:

• Usernames - Usernames cannot normally be deleted, but can sometimes be changed. There is no guarantee provided by the Wikimedia Foundation in the privacy policy that a name will be changed on request. It may still be possible to link your new and old names with a minimal degree of work.

• Work on the project - Your work, including 'signatures' (text indicating your authorship of comments) on all but your own user and talk pages, will usually not be changed or removed. To change these would be a major source of disruption. Individual revisions of individual pages that contain personally identifying information may be oversighted instead.

• Own pages, and pages by or about you - Note that pages are only "yours" in the sense of "associated with you", not in the sense of ownership. Right to Vanish usually handles such pages as follows:

• Your user and talk pages, and their subpages, and other non-article pages that no others have substantively contributed to and whose existence does not impact the project, may be courtesy blanked or deleted.
• At times, other pages specifically about you and nobody else (sanction pages, RFAs, for example) may by discretion be removed, but not always, and rarely when there is a likelihood of future usefulness or reference.
• Pages that do not meet these criteria, such as adminstrator discussion pages, normally are left intact.

• Logs - Administrative and editorial logs showing matters you have been involved with, during your career as an editor, such as your edit history on other pages, will usually remain accessible under your old name.

• Further discussion about you - Discussion about you cannot be controlled by the Foundation, but experience shows it often falls rapidly over the few weeks following vanishing.

Related matters discussed in more detail below include: making a clean start, removal of personal information from public viewing, and other actions you can take.

Limitations

The above are all reversible, if the Right to Vanish is abused. In particular, if a user abuses their Right to Vanish, then it may be declined on a future occasion. In some cases (typically when a person with a history of misconduct or blocks also has a legitimate request), a connection may remain back to the old name, for administrative use only.

You should note that while these measures afford a degree of practical obscurity, they may not stand up to detailed examination from a persistent investigator, and Wikimedia projects has no control over its sublicensees, or over archiving services such as the Internet Archive or Google. Further, these actions require a degree of co-operation from the other users of the project, so Wikimedia cannot make guarantees on this matter. Finally, nothing in "Right to Vanish" can override the terms of the Foundation's privacy policy, which covers disclosure of information in exceptional circumstances.

Practicalities

Requesting

For obvious reasons, the Right to Vanish is often requested without public announcement. For this reason, confidential discussion with a member of the OTRS team is the normal approach. The exact handling, and what if any conditions are required, will often depend upon the exact circumstances.

Change of mind

Right to Vanish is predicated on good faith. Users should be aware that abusing the Right to Vanish, or breaching any terms under which it is requested or granted, will probably result in its reversal, and likely withdrawal of the right in future. Should you wish to change your mind, vary the terms, or return to your old (or another previous) name, please discuss with the OTRS team in confidence first, so that no mis-assumption occurs on discovery. In particular, do not return covertly under a different account or recommence editing without disclosure or discussion, if you based your request upon permanent departure.

Related matters

Clean start under a new name

Scenario: You have a negative track record and you have decided to make a genuine, clean and honest new start, and do not wish it to be tarnished by your prior conduct.

Right to vanish does not generally cover the simple wish to start under a new name. Usually a person with a tarnished reputation can simply discontinue using the old account, and create an unconnected new account which becomes the only account they then use, and is used in a good manner. The old account pages are then quietly blanked or overwritten with a note, and the account abandoned. This is the simple and preferred approach.

If there are specific issues, please ask for advice from any administrator (by email if preferred), or in confidence from OTRS. The most common two concerns and their usual answers are:

• I'll be noticed and it will all start again:

If you change your behavior, and the articles you work on, there is no reason for a connection to be made. If you continue on the same articles or your writing style is so distinctive it will quickly be noticed, then it is likely a connection will be made whether or not you are helped to "vanish", and the perceived concealment may only cause it to be seen negatively when discovered.

• I'll be identified by checkuser or accused of being a sock puppet later:

Checkuser is only used when there is a suspected breach of policy. If you don't use the old account, there is no reason a request would be made. If a request were made for any reason, it would probably be declined for lack of good cause.

(That said, if future usage does draw attention by concerned administrators, then it is likely the connection will be made.)

In all cases, if you feel you are likely to be discovered, consider a note on the old talk page and user page to the effect that you are changing names and setting old conduct aside, and asking others to respect this, or if you do not wish to make it public, ask for your pages to be blanked and let an administrator know you are changing accounts to set the past aside, and are telling them so that it doesn't cause problems. This will usually be sufficient to show good faith if the matter does surface, and will be respected. Being up front and honest pays off even for very negatively viewed editors.

Personal information and its removal

Definition: "Personal information" typically includes, but is not limited to, name, address, telephone number, precise date of birth, instant messenger contact details, photograph, appearance, food tastes, personal views, and similar details of an individual person.

Two policies govern personal information. Individuals in their role as editors, contributors and readers of Wikimedia projects, should refer to the privacy policy. Information on individuals forming part of an encyclopedia article, are subject to the policy on biographies of living people. "Right to vanish" relates specifically to the former.

• The Wikimedia projects will delete personal information about editors and contributors (most likely on user and user talk pages) at their request, provided it is not needed for administrative reasons (which are generally limited to dealing with site misuse issues).

• Personal information related to encyclopedia articles and persons mentioned therein are not covered by "Right to Vanish". Instead, please see the relevant editorial policy on biographical articles, which contains full details of editorial directives, and actions to take if dissatisfied.

Alternative measures

In general, involuntary disclosure of personal information is dealt with via oversight; there is no need to vanish unless the publicly known information is sufficiently notorious and accessible that oversight is no protection.

Also usernames can often be changed, subject to broad conditions and processes.

If you have used your real name, or a longstanding pen name, on Wikimedia projects then in principle everything you write can be traced to that name, and thus to you, as discussed above. However, if you decide to leave Wikimedia projects, there are a few steps that you can take to weaken that connection. They are:

1. Change your username to some other name, one which is not directly associated with you (see Changing username).
2. Change references to your former username to be referenced to your replacement username (you can do this yourself).
3. Delete your existing user and user talk subpages (contact an administrator).
4. Create new user and user talk pages using your old account, containing a brief note indicating that you have left Wikimedia projects and asking that people not refer to you by your name.

Be aware that any edits or posts you make, will appear in page history under the account you used at the time. Therefore take care with your login name usage, and be very careful not to edit your old pages or pages you habitually visit, when you are logged in with a name you do not want associated with that account.

See also

• Right to vanish (meatballwiki)