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As per §4.a of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license that all Stack Exchange posts are under,

upon notice from any Licensor [Stack Exchange] must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Collection any credit as required by Section 4(c), as requested.

The most obvious way for a contributor to do that is to flag their own post. This is what is mentioned by the Meta.SO post on the subject; I couldn't find any mention in the help center. This transmits the request to moderators, who have no way to honor it and must pass on the request to Stack Exchange staff.

It would be more direct if content disassociation requests went directly to Stack Exchange staff, via the contact form. Please mention content credit removal in the help center — possibly under What is the license for the content I post?

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  • 1
    While I'm at it, moderators also get requests to delete a revision (e.g. containing private information), which they must transmit to Stack Exchange staff. This too would be better handled via the contact form.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Nov 30, 2013 at 15:31
  • I'm inclined to agree on eliminating the middle folk here.
    – user50049
    Commented Nov 30, 2013 at 15:42
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    Another improvement in such cases would be a dev flag system that would allow us mods to flag such posts for SE attention without having to ping someone in chat or write an email
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Nov 30, 2013 at 15:53
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    Couldn't this be made a fully automated process in the first place? Why not make it as easy to reach as the CW checkbox?
    – Pekka
    Commented Nov 30, 2013 at 17:52
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    @probablyPekka the downside of that is that it lets abusive users cover their tracks. Furthermore disassociated posts don't count towards the bans since they are effectively removed from the account.
    – Mysticial
    Commented Nov 30, 2013 at 21:28
  • @Pëkka: Yep! There is no downside to it either if it is properly implemented and even if that is "too difficult", the users would be caught sooner or later. In my opinion, the best would be to make it automatic rather than handled by SE staff. I will post a feature request about that since otherwise you need be very careful about post disassociation requests. I got a one-month long ban without prior warning after about five such cases with gaps among them. I was even told, next time my account would be deleted.
    – László Papp
    Commented Aug 20, 2014 at 14:05

1 Answer 1

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If you wanted to frame it as a legal obligation, StackExchange could be nasty and tell you that you already have a way to remove your name: deleting your account.

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    They could, but as far as I can tell they would be incorrect in so doing. The license allows, and SE currently permits, disassociation with any given content desired without prejudice to any other.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Commented Jul 25, 2015 at 17:58
  • @NathanTuggy, where is "without prejudice to any other" written?
    – Nemo
    Commented Jul 25, 2015 at 18:21
  • "any" credit, not "all" credit, and "as requested", not "when a request is received".
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Commented Jul 25, 2015 at 18:22
  • @NathanTuggy, "A" doesn't mean "A and only A", plus it says "from the Collection" which according to the OP applies to the question hence it says nothing on the others, plus it says "to the extent practicable" and if there is no software feature to do it then it's arguably not practicable.
    – Nemo
    Commented Jul 25, 2015 at 18:27

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