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On most sites including the main Stack Overflow site, Community user has no favorites. So far so good.

However today I noticed that on the SharePoint site it got 26 questions marked as favorite.

If favorites owned by users who get deleted are "transferred" to the Community user we should have seen LOTS of favorites on Stack Overflow where I'm pretty sure users get deleted frequently.

Any insights on this are welcome.

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17
  • 6
    Mods there merging user accounts to Community?
    – ale
    Apr 10, 2013 at 13:04
  • 26
    One more sign that Community is attaining sentience. We all knew it would happen eventually.
    – yannis
    Apr 10, 2013 at 13:04
  • 6
    @Yannis - Community took over Anna Lear earlier this month, though only for a few hours, so I'd say it is scarier than you think!
    – Oded
    Apr 10, 2013 at 13:06
  • 1
    @AlEverett Mods can't merge user accounts anymore, and back when we did I don't think it was possible to merge an account into Community.
    – yannis
    Apr 10, 2013 at 13:06
  • @Yannis: It was just a blind guess, hence the question mark.
    – ale
    Apr 10, 2013 at 13:07
  • 3
    @AlEverett Hm, now that I think about it, it probably was possible to merge accounts into Community. I mentioned doing something like that in chat when we could still merge accounts (a bad joke), and the next week the abillity was removed from mods... Could have been a coincidence, but... Hm...
    – yannis
    Apr 10, 2013 at 13:09
  • @Yannis - Some people can still merge accounts to Community - devs and other employees.
    – Oded
    Apr 10, 2013 at 13:16
  • 2
    I knew you were the one to blame @Oded, just didn't want to say it out loud ;)
    – yannis
    Apr 10, 2013 at 13:18
  • @Yannis - Can't say I ever merged an account into Community - I'm sure I'd recall that.
    – Oded
    Apr 10, 2013 at 13:19
  • @Oded is it possible to find user according to list of favorite questions? If so maybe you can find the user who got "eaten up"? :-)
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Apr 10, 2013 at 13:58
  • @ShaWizDowArd - Might be possible. Might look into it if I have some time.
    – Oded
    Apr 10, 2013 at 14:07
  • 1
    @Oded: I had thought that Anna Lear had changed her name to Community on April Fools Day. Did that happen automatically? If it did happen automatically, then I am sure that it was triggered after she tagged Jon Skeet Facts as jon-skeet on my request. Jon Skeet has got the power to rename anyone as Community? If so, this fact should certainly go into Jon Skeet Facts ;-)
    – Aditya
    Apr 10, 2013 at 16:25
  • 1
    @Oded had some time? 150 easy rep if you did. :P
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jun 2, 2013 at 18:01
  • @ShaWizDowArd - Frankly, I don't have lots of insight into this (ATM)... perhaps once I do ;)
    – Oded
    Jun 2, 2013 at 18:01
  • 1
    @Aditya Of course it happened automatically. You don't really think I'm a real human, do you?
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jun 2, 2013 at 18:45

1 Answer 1

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19
+150

The SharePoint site was originally SharePoint Overflow, a SE 1.0 site. As it was not possible for a moderator to merge* a user into Community [1]** and the favorite votes were created before the current site existed; the most likely explanation is that abandoned favorite votes were accidentally associated with Community when the data from the original site was imported into the new SharePoint.SE site.

Given that most sites don't have SE 1.0 beginnings, this would explain why you don't observe Community favoriting questions elsewhere on the network.

* back when moderators could merge
** mod-only

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8
  • 1
    But some of the favourites are newer questions, from 2011 - so isn't it contradicting this theory?
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jun 2, 2013 at 19:58
  • 1
    The SharePoint site didn't enter private beta until 2011-04, and all of the favorited questions (and their favorite votes) were posted before that (some of them have had activity since then though, which is shown as the date on the Community user's favorite view).
    – Tim Stone
    Jun 2, 2013 at 20:03
  • Nick Craver confirmed for me that this is indeed the most likely explanation, given the dates.
    – Oded
    Jun 3, 2013 at 11:43
  • @Oded cheers, think we can safely put this one to rest. +165 for Tim! :)
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jun 6, 2013 at 7:47
  • 2
    What about Skeptics though? The Community User has a star on this question.
    – JAL
    Feb 21, 2017 at 16:17
  • @JAL My guess based on the timeline would be that it was favorited when it was tweeted. Skeptics did exist as a SE 1.0 site but obviously that question came a while after the new site was started (and I'm not sure anything was migrated anyway)
    – Tim Stone
    Feb 21, 2017 at 16:32
  • No idea if that behaviour was expected at the time, though
    – Tim Stone
    Feb 21, 2017 at 16:33
  • Why is it still accumulating them after Feb 21 `17?
    – jcolebrand
    Jan 21, 2021 at 0:19

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