6

On this suggested edit, the user (same userID) is having to suggest an edit on his own answer.

enter image description here

Is there something I'm missing here?

2
  • 4
    It's not a bug. The user had two accounts and apparently had them merged after suggesting the edit.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Aug 25, 2013 at 18:11
  • Got it. Feel like that should auto-accept the edit or something, but sounds reasonable.
    – jonsca
    Aug 25, 2013 at 18:13

1 Answer 1

5

This happens when people write answers using cookie based accounts, if you lose the cookie then you become completely disenfranchised from the account. People usually figure out that this happened because they didn't register, go ahead and do so and then contact us for merging if the system didn't catch on.

Fun fact: There was once a user on Stack Overflow that visited once every few days to answer Prolog questions over a year long period, each time creating a new unregistered account. When we finally got them all together, and he indicated that he wanted them merged, he came out with almost 10k reputation.

We've since gotten much better about detecting when this happens and fixing it silently, but occasionally folks use a different email (which may have the same gravatar), or something else about the accounts prevents the automated merge from taking place. These go into a special accounts queue, where we (employees) review clogged merges daily and make sure they get done.

1
  • 1
    It's nice to know you review this internally. To me it seems that the number of times I have to have someone merge accounts has gone down drastically over the past months.
    – slhck
    Aug 30, 2013 at 20:31

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .