Help:Closing an account

Closing your account is a process by which your account is disabled and cannot be used. Because of the way Wikia works, Staff members cannot delete and/or entirely remove accounts.

Alternatives to disabling

If you feel you need to leave or quit Wikia, you can just stop using your account. You may want to consider leaving a message on your user and user talk pages before doing this to let other community members know you have left. To no longer receive e-mails from Wikia, you can remove or change the email address in your preferences.

If you want to be sure your account cannot be used by you again, you can also scramble your password so that you won't know it. Removing your email and scrambling your password can both be done by visiting your preferences. Together, they have the same effect as closing your account. However, edits made by you in the past will still be attributed to your username.

Wikia Staff are also able to rename your account. Please see Rename my account for more details.

Disabling an account

If you feel the above cannot be an option for you for various reasons, Wikia Staff can, upon your explicit request, disable the account for you. What this does:

• Auto-blanks your email address as stored in your preferences
• Auto-scrambles your password into a randomly generated gibberish
• Changes "real name" in your account preferences to Account disabled
• Removes your profile picture completely (changes back to default profile picture)
• Makes your account disabled internally (this shows on Special:Contributions and other places)

What this does NOT do:

• Remove your username from any edit histories
• Remove your username from any logs (such as moves)
• Remove any pages you have created
• Remove any edits you have made to any page
• Release the name for another user to use later

How to request

Special:Contact}}.

If you feel disabling is absolutely needed, contact the Wikia Community Support team by using the Contact Wikia link at the bottom of any page.

• On the main contact page, click the Disable my account link under Account changes
• Read the information at the top of the disabling page to ensure you understand what an account disabling does.
• If need be, re-read this help page linked to under the Contact Wikia header
• If you are sure that you want to disable your account, click the option saying you have read this page and the option confirming you want your account disabled
• Click Send to Wikia. Your request will be received by a Community Support Team member who will disable your account and send you a confirmation e-mail...

This change is permanent. No backup of this private information is kept after an account is disabled, and the account will not be "undone" for any reason.

Technical reading

• FAQ at MediaWiki.org – and the potential problems about removing users from the system.