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I am attempting to add a Stack Exchange OpenID to an existing Stack Exchange account.

That’s right — Stack Exchange is now officially an OpenID provider!

https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/05/stack-exchange-is-an-openid-provider/

https://openid.stackexchange.com/

After signing up at the site above, I am presented with the following page:

Signed up for OpenID

When I go to profile > logins > add more logins... I am presented with this screen:

Many OpenID options, but not StackExchange.

This page has no button for Stack Exchange's own OpenID. The OpenIDs from Google, Facebook, and AOL (!!!) do have buttons.

On this page I have no idea what to click. I do not know how to add the newly created Stack Exchange OpenID.

Feature Request:

  • Add Stack Exchange-branded OpenID button to add more logins... page.
  • The OpenID success page should have directions on how to add the new ID to a new or old Stack Exchange account. Or a button to do this automatically.
  • From the my logins page, provide a simple way to create and link a new OpenID all in one step.

P.S. In the mean time, can someone tell me how to connect this OpenID? I still can't figure it out.

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There are a few quirks at play here. The chief among them is that Stack Exchange OpenID doesn't support multi-signin and making that work is somewhat non-trivial. So, if you already have one associated with your Q&A account, trying to add another one would just be a massively confusing mess.

However. While ideally I'd like to allow adding a new SE OpenID to any account through a creative (ab)use of internal API calls, we can (probably*) easily enable adding SE OpenID logins to accounts that don't already have any associated with them without doing the extra work needed to fully and properly support it in all cases. This is on my list... somewhere.

In the meantime, you can use this hack workaround for new Stack Exchnange OpenIDs. For existing ones, try this:

  1. Log out of your Q&A site profiles.

  2. Log in with the Stack Exchange OpenID you already have. Two things might happen, depending on what email addresses are involved:

    • your new profile will be automatically merged with your original, which will add the Stack Exchange OpenID to your list of available credentials; or
    • you will end up with a second Q&A site profile. In this case, hit up the contact page (linked at the bottom of any page) and start the user merge process. The end result will be the same as above.

* As far as I can tell, it'd work fine and we did, indeed, allow this in the past. However, I haven't taken more than a cursory look of late, so I'm hedging my bets a bit here.

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  • I guess I don't understand the point of Stack Exchange providing an OpenID if it can't actually be used on an account. The "hack" link seems to be creating a new Stack Exchange OpenID, rather than using the new one I just created? Unreal. – pkamb Feb 3 '15 at 20:03
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    @pkamb "Can't be used" is a strong way to put that. A lot of people use it, myself included. What you're looking at is several years worth of product evolution... occasionally not for the better. I agree that removing the ability to add an OpenID to an existing account outright was a bad call - but putting back just the way it was is also not great for the reasons I described in my answer. Good point re: new OpenID accounts. There's a different workaround for existing ones. I updated my answer. FWIW, I'm sorry this is currently a pain in the ass. – Adam Lear♦ Feb 3 '15 at 20:19
  • Ok, thanks for the updated workaround that merges the two existing accounts. Looking forward to a button that adds a Stack Exchange OpenID easily, even if only one can be added. – pkamb Feb 3 '15 at 20:29

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