I think I found some user accounts that should be merged; what do I do?

Question

While reviewing the suggested edits queue I found a suggested edit to a question or answer that appeared to be submitted by the same person. Upon further research, I found that the user actually had two user accounts, by the same name.

I've spotted this sort of behavior before and have always been confused (but never done this amount of research)—what's the better approach here?

• leave well enough alone, it's someone else's business
• contact them myself with a comment on some post
• post here and let moderator handle
• flag for moderator attention and explain there

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Answer 1

I'd say the best course of action is to flag any one of the user's posts for moderator attention. In the box provided, explain why you think that the user accounts are in need of merging and be sure to provide links that substantiate your suspicions. (Although in this case, it's pretty clear-cut...)

In general, I see little or no reason to bring it up here on Meta. No community discussion is required, and this is probably something best kept private between the individual user(s) and the moderator handling it.

I very much recommend against trying to contact them on your own. People don't always respond well to this, and it's possible that you'll end up just causing trouble. Moderators have tools in their bag of tricks that let them handle this type of situation much more elegantly. And even in cases like this one (where the user obviously didn't intend to create a duplicate account), their "fix" would be to flag one of their own posts for moderator attention and ask for their accounts to be merged. I'd say that doing it yourself cuts out the "middle man" and arguably makes the experience all that much more seamless for a new user.

Answer 2

Mods haven't been able to merge accounts for a while - it is extremely messy when it goes wrong and there's very few situations where accounts need merging - commonly unregistered accounts with lost cookies or the rare situation where an alternate account is initially used for privacy but its no longer needed and so on.

If you notice a possible sock being used abusively in some manner, flag it. A mod can review to take action or escalate it to a CM.

If its in good faith - say the cases above, they'll need to use the contact us link to request a merger. Ideally the PII (IP addresses and/or email addresses) should match for the accounts in question to make it easier to verify.