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I was browsing around some of the other Stack Exchange sites I use and noticed that most of the ones I recently joined have two names listed under the recent names on my profile:

a25bedc5-3d09-41b8-82fb-ea6c353d75ae
Anonymous

Why would these be added?

It's currently showing these two additional display names for these profiles:

I realize that these should eventually go away, but really they shouldn't even be there. It seems that the system changes my username twice when creating and linking a new account on some other site. Why wouldn't it start my account at my actual display name at the time of creation?

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  • 1
    Funny. Same thing for me on a site I registered to today (physics), except that it shows my real name (that I have in my profile) instead of that GUID-type thingy.
    – Mat
    Commented Jan 7, 2012 at 19:50
  • 2
    Nice, that explains earlier confusion!
    – Arjan
    Commented Jan 7, 2012 at 20:05
  • I had only noticed it on a site I moderated and presumed it was an advanced moderators feature for justifying sockpuppet bans.
    – Ambo100
    Commented Jan 7, 2012 at 20:34
  • I have all my accounts that displayed these two names now(first time I noticed this was at meta.SO), even the accounts that linked long time ago..
    – Kjuly
    Commented Jan 8, 2012 at 4:16
  • 1
    Great mother of Zod! A 100% accept rate on Meta? You totally have to work on that.
    – user50049
    Commented Jan 11, 2012 at 22:55

1 Answer 1

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This will be fixed next build; apparently (as I'm sure you guessed) new accounts start with a dummy name, that is filled in ASAP (using either the "user12345" pattern or a name from you or your OpenID provider) - news to me, since it happens very fast. In fact, you just proved a code-comment accurate:

// some random string so obnoxious people will complain about it
public const string NewUserDisplayName = "a25bedc5-3d09-41b8-82fb-ea6c353d75ae";

see, the logic was flawless!

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    +1 for revealing source code.. ;-D
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jan 11, 2012 at 11:16
  • Positively brilliant. That user deserves a T shirt.
    – user50049
    Commented Jan 11, 2012 at 12:05
  • @TimPost: I would proudly wear that shirt! I'll even attach my Stack Overflow GOLD Nerd Merit Badge to the sleeve. :P
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Jan 11, 2012 at 21:48
  • I don't speak for Stack Exchange, but I think a T shirt to commemorate hitting this odd corner case would be in order. @Shog9 perhaps it's possible? I don't summon the shog unless I feel it's a moral imperative. And, well as a mod, I'm supposed to be encouraging very enthusiastic users. He does have a bit of gold to show off :)
    – user50049
    Commented Jan 11, 2012 at 22:45
  • @Tim re "rare"... It would affect any account created on any given site in the last 90 days (rolling)... :p
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Jan 11, 2012 at 23:04
  • I found a handful amount of names like this while messing around with user name statistics in SEDE queries (I actually came here to ask about it then found this). For example, there are 125 on SO, 3 on SU. Should these still exist (given "this will be fixed next build") or does it warrant a bug report? (One of the SO ones has ~326 rep, last seen March 2014, member for 4 years, so it's not really a brand new account any more - although I suppose he could have actually selected that as his user name to be clever).
    – Jason C
    Commented Nov 20, 2014 at 20:29

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