Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27166622-20151104154150/@comment-1757994-20151104235312

FYI, when Jagex released inactive names, they did something similar to the second point of Tupka's list. The inactive account was renamed to, so it still exists. If the old owners ever come back, they can get access to it using their email address, then rename it to whatever they want, assuming the name isn't already taken.

Wikia has a policy of "we only rename accounts once" to keep name change requests to a minimum, because it's a hassle as described above. However, MediaWiki also has no inherent mechanism to reconnect users to their old accounts. Remember that MediaWiki does not require anyone to register an email address to create an account, so the login ID is not (and cannot be) the registered email address. There are ways (one example) that people could establish that they are the owner of an old, renamed account, but that doesn't mean Wikia has to allow it.