Wikipedia:Account deletion

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This page is an official policy on Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. Feel free to update the page as needed, but make sure that changes you make to this policy really do reflect consensus, before you make them.


Accounts on Wikimedia wikis will not be deleted. Accounts with contributions can not be deleted since this would allow another user to create the account, and claim authorship of those edits.

If you decide after creating an account, particularly if you did so using your real name, that you would rather be anonymous, you can have your account renamed. You can request this at Wikipedia:Changing username, or by contacting a developer with the ability to change usernames. You can choose a new name for your account, or let a developer choose to rename it to something like "FormerUser284". When this is done, your contributions list will be assigned to the new user name.

It is not possible for your edits to be removed entirely. They can only be reassigned to something else so as not to violate the GNU Free Documentation License.

You may also request your user and talk page be deleted as explained at Wikipedia:User page.

Any talk pages that you have signed will still display your former user name. These need to be changed manually by editing the pages concerned. If you feel strongly about your name no longer appearing on the site, you can edit these pages to remove your signature, or ask for other users to do this at Wikipedia:Help wanted. The easiest way to find these is by clicking "what links here" from your user page. There is currently no means of removing signatures from old revisions in the page history.

See also: MeatBall:RightToVanish

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