User:Bastique/Real names of non-encyclopedic individuals

Note, this is not Right to Vanish.

Events that occur on-wiki have real world implications. By virtue of the *.wikipedia.org and sister projects being as highly ranked on search engines as it is, any item contained on a searchable page is generally readily available to anyone on the internet.

That being said, many people do not realize the implication of using one's real name while editing our projects. Often times people with varying intentions will begin to participate, having created an account name reflecting a real life name, or sign anonymous comments using their name. Sometimes these people don't blend well with the stated purpose of the projects in which they decided to participate, and the project admins decide it's for the best if they, and the participant part ways.

In any case, real names have an impact far beyond the world of Wikimedia. As the content provider, the Wikimedia Foundation sometimes gets requests to remove a non-encyclopedic individual's real name from talk pages, project namespaces as well as other on-wiki areas that might be accessible from the internet at large.

As content provider, the Wikimedia Foundation will endeavor to fulfill these requests in the least obtrusive way possible, often simply occluding the name from the page (such as replacing the name John Smith with J*** S****). This enables the project participants access to historical events.