Oversight, AN

edit

Given your request at the Administrator's noticeboard, I am duplicating my response to you here:

Oversight requests are done via e-mail, which is about as private as it gets. :) See Wikipedia:Requests for oversight for procedure. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)Reply
Hi. I tried several times to send them a mail but I still didn't get an answer. Now I don't know what to do. Is there a mediator or something who would listen to my problems? Retrinko (talk) 11:19, 24 September 2008 (UTC)Reply
When did you first mail them? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:35, 24 September 2008 (UTC)Reply
Well, I mailed them almost a year ago. Then I recognized that they didn't reply. So I sent them mails again and again and I still didn't get a response. Normally it isn't allowed on Wikipedia to remove user contributions because of the license but is there a chance to make an exception? If not then please tell me how long the unusefull user contributions will exist. I can't imagine that they will exist forever. There has to be a way to remove my unconfortable contributions. Retrinko (talk) 19:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)Reply
Depending on their nature, it might be appropriate to delete them, but any administrator can still see them then. Only the oversight committee can delete them so that administrators also do not have access to them. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:20, 24 September 2008 (UTC)Reply
Oh really, thanks very much! Retrinko (talk) 19:43, 24 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

With regards to deleting user contributions, let me note that it is extremely unlikely that all of a user's contributions would be removed. If the contributors have released personal information that needs to be removed for privacy concerns, then that may be done, but most contributions will not meet that description. If there are concerns that contributions are identified with particular editors...say if the account was under the individual's real name and the individual edited in ways that could cause harm or embarrassment to him...then these can be handled through changing username, which moves all contributions to the history of the new name.

If you would like to email me the username(s) that concerns you and explain the edits that are of concern, I'll be happy to look and see if I can help. I will keep that information confidential. I would prefer to discuss the generalities of the situation, discretely, here. As I am not on the oversight committee, I think it's important that I remain transparent with respect to any advice I may give or action I may take in the matter. Again, I would respect your confidentiality and remain discrete in any on-wiki conversation, but I would feel more comfortable assisting in that way.

If you would prefer to handle the matter entirely via e-mail, you probably ought to contact one of the regular members of the oversight committee, who are more accustomed to handling such situations than I am. (Most of them should be e-mail enabled.) If I wanted to talk to a member of the oversight committee and my mail to the committee in general went unanswered, I would probably contact User:FT2, although there are other members I recognize from the project and trust as well. For instance, User:Jpgordon and User:Thebainer are both known to me, and I wouldn't hesitate to ask either for assistance. Whoever you choose to contact, please be complete and specific in your e-mail as to what accounts are involved and what aspects of the contribution history of these accounts are problematic. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:24, 24 September 2008 (UTC)Reply