All Wikipedia editors have the right to leave. The usual way to leave the Wikipedia project is simply to stop editing. Your contributions remain in Wikipedia. It is suggested that you place a {{retired}} template at the top of your user and talk pages to indicate that you are no longer involved with Wikipedia. This tells other editors that you are no longer active and that messages should not be left for you. If you ever want to return to editing, simply remove the {{retired}} template. Retiring will not prevent you from logging in at a future date.

If you no longer wish to be associated with your past edits, you can exercise your Right to vanish. This is not usually necessary. The Wikipedia community will typically accord the right to vanish to users in good standing who exercise their right to leave and ask to "vanish" permanently.

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,^[1]
• replacing references to the former username with references to the replacement username,
• deleting the account's user page and subpages, possibly including talk pages, and
• posting a brief note indicating that the account owner has left Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 right to vanish is only available to users who are also exercising their right to leave. The "right to vanish" is not a "right to a fresh start" under a new identity. Vanishing means that the individual is vanishing, not just the account. Vanished users have no right to silently return under a new identity.

Users in good standing are free to request a change of username at any time. All contributions made under the old username will be reattributed to the new username, including deleted contributions, preserving the edit history.

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.

Allowing your editing to trail off or simply stopping editing is likely to be about as effective since for the most part if a user in good standing disappears people tend to accept they are gone and leave it at that. This has the advantage that you can change your mind with no penalty.

The template {{Retired}}, placed on your user page and talk page, indicates that you are no longer active on Wikipedia. This is a simple and polite way to leave Wikipedia.

To vanish more completely, you may wish to blank your userpage, talkpage, and any subpages in your userspace, and/or tag them with {{db-user}}, which will notify administrators that you wish them to be speedily deleted.

• Wikipedia:Changing username
• meta:Right to vanish
• Template:Retired
• Template:User EX-WP