How do you correct a situation where a new user misunderstood how WikiTree works and registered in the name of a family member, historical figure, or other third party?
For example, let's say Joe User creates their account in the name of George Washintgon and proceeds to start entering George Washington's family tree. The user may even post memories and messages, which now appear as if they were posted by George Washington.
There are two options for fixing this. These options can only be done by the user themselves or by administrators with sysop permissions.
1.) Rename George Washington to Joe User.
This will require editing all appropriate information on the profile's edit page, including changing the Last Name at Birth, e.g. changing "Washington" to "User". In the background this uses the Special:ChangeLNAB program which takes two steps: it creates User-X and merges Washington-X into it.
This maintains all the work that Joe User did in the name of George Washington. The memories and messages will be changed so they appear to have come from Joe User. Moreover, the edit history items and Trusted Lists will now properly have Joe User on them.
The only problem is that Washington's information and family history will now appear to be Joe User's. This will need to be edited manually, but it is not difficult. If the user entered Washintgon's parents or children the parent/child relationships will need to be broken. If a new record for Washington is created you will of course want to remove User-X and add the new Washington-X as the parent or child.
2.) Delete the e-mail address for George Washington.
This would make more sense if the user wasn't especially active or may have been a vandal.
Washington's information and family history will remain, unless manually removed.
The user will no longer have an account. To use WikiTree they will have to reregister as if they were new user.
The problem is that anything the user did as George Washintgon will still appear to have been done by George Washington. Memories and messages will appear to have been posted by George Washintgon. Washington-X will still be on Trusted Lists.
You will need to manually delete memories and messages and add info@wikitree.com as the manager on Trusted List pages for any profiles that the user created.