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Blank user_real_name in all Wikimedia wikis
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Description

Several decades ago, users in Wikimedia may set their "real names" (which in many cases is set to actual real names) and they are stored in user_real_name column. This feature is later removed, but real name already set remains in database and are visible in replica (this column is public) with no way to remove. Therefore I propose that this field should be blanked in all Wikimedia wikis since they may infinitely contain PII.

In most Wikimedia wikis this field is sparsely used; but in Wikitech almost every user has a real name.

Event Timeline

+1, I just made a query for enwiki, there are 6172 results.

Might be worth emailing WMF Privacy/WMF Legal to make them aware of this task/proposal

As the WMF-Legal project tag was added to this task, some general information to avoid wrong expectations:
Please note that public tasks in Wikimedia Phabricator are in general not a place where to expect feedback from the Legal Team of the Wikimedia Foundation due to the scope of the team and/or nature of legal topics. See the project tag description.
Please see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal for when and how to contact the Legal Team. Thanks!

Ladsgroup added a project: DBA.
Ladsgroup moved this task from Triage to Blocked on the DBA board.

Pending explicit sign off from legal. It has been already unofficially greenlit.

I took a look at this from Privacy-Legal and recommend blanking the field. Thank you!

Thanks. I will get to it ASAP.

I have cleaned it up in testwiki and labswiki. Will wait a bit before moving to the rest of wikis.

but in Wikitech almost every user has a real name.

Just to double check, it had 777 cases only and I removed them. Did I miss something obvious?

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-03-04T22:19:33Z] <Amir1> clearing user_real_name in group0 wikis (T387212)

Ladsgroup moved this task from In progress to Done on the DBA board.

Cleaned up everywhere. I will make a follow up ticket to evaluate fully getting rid of this column.

Cleaned up everywhere. I will make a follow up ticket to evaluate fully getting rid of this column.

Already exists: T306248: Consider storing real name in user properties