User talk:Caldwellb22

Regarding the talk page blanking

Hi Caldwellb22,

I am going to follow up on this talk page—the talk page attached to your new account—so that you get notifications when someone posts a message (and for a few other practical reasons). For that reason I am also going to remove the deletion request template you posted on the other page, but please be assured that we will continue to follow up on it.

So, to the issue at hand… If I understand correctly, you have previously created a user account using your real name and made some edits under that account. You have subsequently lost access to that account and created this new account (Caldwellb22), and now you would like to delete the talk page attached to your old account. Is that correct? And is it the contents of the talk page (the messages other users have posted there) you wish to delete, or is it the account name itself (presumably because it contains your real name)?

There are several issues that need to be sorted out to resolve this, but the primary challenge is going to be verifying that it is indeed the same person that created both accounts. Recall that we do not know you personally and so generally have no way to know whether it is the same person that created the original account that is now requesting the change to it. Much will therefore depend on whether we can find some way to verify that both accounts are controlled by the same person.

The very easiest way to do that would be if you regained access to the old account. Did you enter an email address when you created the old account? Do you still have access to that email? Have you tried using the "Forgotten password" or "Reset password" function on the login page? If you go to Special:PasswordReset (or follow the link from the login page) and enter the old account name and the email address you used when you created it, you should be guided through the steps of resetting the password. Once you have logged in with the old account you can do things like requesting a username change (so the old account is renamed to something that does not contain your real name) or request the deletion of pages in your user space.

If you cannot regain access to your old account we will have to try to find some other way to verify your identity, but that may be challenging. By the way, please do not post any personally identifying information here in an attempt to prove your identity. All information posted here will be publicly visible to anyone, and only a select few administrators here are authorised to handle such information (they have signed nondisclosure and access to non-public information agreements with the WikiMedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikisource and Wikipedia).

Please also note that we do not usually delete the contents of user talk pages that other users have posted messages on. But if your old account is renamed then the title of the page will change to the new username, so if that is your concern then an account rename will address it.

I will be watching this talk page so I will see the replies you post here, but may not be able to respond immediately (everyone here is a volunteer doing this in their spare time, so response times can sometimes be erratic). --Xover (talk) 09:51, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

There is nothing of any value on this user page, other than a few redirects. These redirects lead to pages that wiki has already deleted by request from me. Either way if the user page can’t be deleted a change to the user name I feel would fix this issue, as I do not approve of my full name being used so publicly in this way. Also, I didn’t create the user page William McDougall, I just opened an account and tried to post my work to it. It was people from wiki that started posting in this user page space, in much the same way that you have just created this user page under Caldwellb22 by posting here. I can’t gain access to the account using the change password option because it says there is no email address connected to the user name William McDougall. I’ve tried requesting password resets using the email addresses that I use and none of them are connected to this account which is odd. It shouldn’t be that hard to prove this account belonged to me, after all it did belong to me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.186.32.176 (talk) 16:24, 29 July 2019‎ (UTC)

The page as such was created when someone posted a message to it, but the user account existed from the moment you created it, and it was visible in the public logs and attached to every edit made with that account. It is a fundamental aspect of all the Wikimedia projects (i.e. Wikisource, Wikipedia, etc.) that all edits are logged and associated with the user that made the edit (there are both philosophical, practical, and legal reasons for this). For example, you can view the revision history for this talk page here (it's the same link you'll find in the "View history" tab at the top of the page). We generally allow a user to request the deletion of any page for which they are the only contributor, but not when someone else has edited it too, mainly in order to preserve history.

If you cannot gain access to your old account then this may be quite difficult to resolve. We cannot, for all the obvious reasons, just take someone's word for it that they are the legitimate owner of an account to which they do not have access. And since it appears there is not even an email account associated with it (having an email address registered is optional here, unlike most websites) there is no easy way to establish it. I think I'll have to ask around to see whether we have any other mechanisms that might be applicable here. --Xover (talk) 15:23, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

The IP address used here and the IP address for the account at issue are the same. Surely, you or some other person at wiki can compare the two and make the necessary changes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.186.32.176 (talk) 17:33, 29 July 2019‎ (UTC)

That's a good idea: even if not sufficient by itself it might be an additional piece of evidence to help verification. Note that the IP address using a given account is considered personally identifiable information (an IP address can be traced too a geographic location) and is not actually available to administrators, only to a limited group of volunteers who have signed the requisite non-disclosure agreements with the Wikimedia foundation and even then only subject to strict limitations on under what circumstances the data can be accessed. This is usually a good thing, but might get in the way in this specific situation. But I'll keep it in mind as I look into this. --Xover (talk) 16:00, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I created the page at issue so that I could post historical research that I had conducted concerning my local community; therefore, when you put the subject matter and the user name for this page Ie my name, together - my name and part of my personal address is actually visible at that page and that was never my intention and must be rectified by wiki, as it opens me up to a number of very serious issues not least potential identify theft or fraud. Surely wiki has a duty of care to protect users from these kinds of issues forsaken or not foreseen, by them or the user. I created the original page with good intentions,I did not forsee my name and part of my address being displayed to half the world. When that location is typed into google my name and the user page attracted to it is one of the first to appear. That’s not acceptable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.186.32.176 (talk) 18:16, 29 July 2019‎ (UTC)

Indeed. And Wikisource takes such privacy concerns very seriously. We routinely remove personally identifiable information that has been accidentally or maliciously revealed, and have strict policies for handling the non-public information we are made privy to. What is complicating matters here is that you had lost access to the account before the privacy issue came up. Under those circumstances we get somewhat caught between the competing concerns for safeguarding personally identifiable information and for preventing fraud and account hijacking. If you had been able to regain access to the original account you would have been able to simply request an account rename which would be handled as a routine matter (it happens several times a day on average). But I am still researching what options are available here and will get back to you.

PS. In the mean time I would generally recommend that you log in to your new account when replying here or making other edits. While the IP address used with a specific user account is considered protected information, the IP address of those who edit without logging in is not and is visible in logs and so forth. There should be a prominent warning to this effect when you attempt to save a message while not logged in. I know this distinction seems arbitrary, but it does actually make sense in light of various more or less technical details. --Xover (talk) 16:43, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

┌───────────────────┘
Ok, after conferring with other administrators, here's what we can do here on Wikisource:

The pages here on Wikisource where the old account name (i.e. your real name) appeared together with the page name (i.e. the geographic information) of your uploaded work have been deleted or had the relevant information redacted. This affected the talk page associated with your old account under your real name and the talk page of the other old account that used a pseudonym, plus one archive of a community discussion page where you had posted using the old secondary account.

This should hide these two pieces of information from Google such that searching on Google for those two search terms should not return any hits on Wikisource. However please note that we have no control over what search results Google displays, or how frequently they update their results.

As to the user account with your real name, this kind of account management is outside the scope of the authority of administrators on Wikisource since user accounts are shared across all the different projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation (i.e. Wikisource, Wikipedia, etc.). To follow up on that issue you will have to contact the group called the Stewards—who have the authority to manage global user accounts on Wikimedia projects—either through their public wiki-based request queue at m:Stewards' noticeboard or through email to stewardswikimedia.org. Since they will need information about the account names and so forth I would suggest contacting them via email. Do feel free to include a link to this page in your request so that the Stewards can see the context for the request, and they can of course contact me if they need any information from the Wikisource side. Please do note, though, that I do not know whether they will actually be able to do anything about the old account name under these circumstances.

I hope this resolves at least your most pressing concerns.--Xover (talk) 10:46, 30 July 2019 (UTC)