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I created a new account on Ask Different this morning. I want to merge it into my main account. I used the "I want to merge my profiles" option of the Contact Us form in the Help Center.

It sent emails to both of my accounts. I clicked the links in both emails, and confirmed that I wanted to merge the accounts:

Thank you for confirming ownership of your accounts. The account user134206 will be removed, and all rep and votes will be transferred to account Jeremy Banks as a result of this merge:

Please click OK to confirm.

After I clicked OK, I was redirected to my old profile, but it didn't contain any content from the new profile. The links in the emails are now 404, so they were processed in some capacity, but the merge seems to have failed.

I tried again and it produced the same result.

1 Answer 1

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If you have lots of reputation, the automated merge bots tend to get intimidated. "What if this is someone trying to STEAL HIS REPS?" they think; "WE'D GET FIRED!"

They're not the smartest of bots.

So they put them in a queue and wait for someone to come along and approve them. Which I occasionally remember to do.

And just did.

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    But shouldn't the bots say something to notify of their fear? Message like "automatic merge isn't possible" instead of leaving the user in the dark scratching his head? Commented Jun 30, 2015 at 19:53
  • Nah, it is much more fun to get some idea of the inner feelings and emotions of bots @ShadowWizard
    – rene Mod
    Commented Jun 30, 2015 at 20:45
  • Sounds like a feature-request, @ShadowWizard.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jun 30, 2015 at 23:28
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    @Shog9, doesn't sound quite like a feature request to me, but what do I know? I would have thought feature requests would normally be intended for publicly visible functionality, not about internal workflow and business processes. Sounds like the issue here relates to an internal workflow that's internal to Stack Exchange employees and not visible to the public, rather than a publicly visible feature. (Not to mention that "make the merge-accounts process actually work reliably" sounds more like a bug report than a feature request.)
    – D.W.
    Commented Jul 1, 2015 at 1:29
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    It's a feature-request until someone rolls out their snazzy new login system & we can maybe get fewer people accidentally creating new accounts when just trying to log into a new site, @D.W. - which is to say, it ain't gonna get fixed either way until some yaks get shaved.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 1, 2015 at 2:26
  • @D.W. isn't showing a message to the user an example of publicly visible functionality?
    – shea
    Commented Jul 5, 2015 at 10:54
  • @Shog9 if one account has upvaotes from other account will those scores cancel?
    – Fast Snail
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 12:16
  • Yes, @FastSnail.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 17:56

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