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Is there a reason why a site that is in Private Beta (for example http://bricks.stackexchange.com) is shown on my Flair, but not in my Accounts list:

Flair

Bricks.SE is seen second to left:

Flair, with Bricks.SE showing

Accounts

Bricks.SE is not shown (currently have 880 rep, grown at around ~200/day since 25th):

Accounts List, not showing Bricks.SE

Edit to add:

The current argument that we "don't link to brick walls" doesn't really seem to hold much water:

  1. The Area 51 Proposal page has links to the profiles of all the committed users.
  2. A question migrated to Photography has a link back to Bricks.
    enter image description here

This makes the account page the odd one out here, and I no longer understand why.

Shouldn't this be consistent?

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1 Answer 1

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In the private beta case, anyone not in the private beta couldn't use the link to go to your profile there...so showing it on the Accounts tab doesn't really make sense. The only way around that limitation is checking if you're a member of the private beta, and isn't really reasonable either (for performance, and possibly our sanity, reasons).

However when it comes to flair, we show it off, as much reputation as you have everywhere all added up, because showing it causes no harm or navigational confusion.

That's not to say we can't filter flair, we certainly can...I don't think there's a strong consensus on this on our side, other than it allows you to have flair if you're only in a private beta, which you couldn't do if we filtered private betas out.

Feel free to comment here and throw us reasons for/against a filter on flair.

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  • That does make sense, and I fully understand not wanting to check if both users are in the same PB on the accounts screen. If the link I wrap around the flair goes to my SE profile accounts page (stackexchange.com/users/15574?tab=accounts), it looks a bit odd that the second icon is missing.
    – Zhaph - Ben Duguid
    Oct 28, 2011 at 14:14
  • Also, it could possibly be a good way to drive up some additional interest - the login screen states the site's in PB, so the user could bookmark the site for future reference. The Area 51 page lists all the users and has links to their (inaccessible) profiles too: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10919/lego so it's not as if it would be inconsistent.
    – Zhaph - Ben Duguid
    Oct 28, 2011 at 14:17
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    @Zhaph - While that may be true for some people, our experience has been "don't link to brick walls", which is effectively what we'd be doing for most users there. In those cases, we'd rather not link, since it has a tendency to tease then aggravate users...and in the end they see no content and we get an angry email :)
    – Nick Craver
    Oct 28, 2011 at 14:20
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    You could include it in the table without a link, and with a fat note "(private beta)".
    – Paŭlo Ebermann
    Oct 28, 2011 at 14:24
  • Fair enough, I can go with that. It does seem odd then that the Area 51 page for this currently does link to all those "brick walls" - both the user profiles and their recent activity.
    – Zhaph - Ben Duguid
    Oct 28, 2011 at 14:25
  • The whole "don't link to brick walls" argument is getting weaker by the minute: photo.stackexchange.com/questions/16741/… This question has managed to be migrated from Bricks to Phototography, and includes the link back to Bricks for all users. Clearly, everywhere else the two week private beta is considered short enough not to be an issue? ;)
    – Zhaph - Ben Duguid
    Oct 28, 2011 at 16:35
  • @Zhaph - Your migration example is an exceptionally rare case, I really don't believe that correlates to "Clearly, everywhere else".
    – Nick Craver
    Oct 28, 2011 at 17:53
  • Nick, I agree that the migration example is a tiny edge case. What about the profile lists on Area51?
    – Zhaph - Ben Duguid
    Oct 28, 2011 at 17:57
  • Whats wrong with listing the account on the Accounts page, but not linking it to anywhere ? and showing a big PRIVATE BETA message.
    – asheeshr
    Mar 24, 2013 at 7:26
  • @AshRj - that doesn't sound very private...
    – Nick Craver
    Mar 24, 2013 at 9:37
  • And on the same scale, showing it on the flair sounds private ? ;)
    – asheeshr
    Mar 24, 2013 at 13:30
  • @AshRj - it's a 16px icon that shows if there's enough room to do so, not a large advertisement of a site that may not survive the beta period. Also as I said in the answer, it makes flair for private-beta-only users possible.
    – Nick Craver
    Mar 27, 2013 at 21:14

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