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Suppose Question A had a bounty placed on it, and then an exact duplicate Question B with answers on it (that were written after the bounty was set) was migrated from a different site, and merged with it.

Whether through the automatic selection or through manual awarding, the bounty is awarded to an answer whose author does not have an account here, because they answered Question B.

Can this happen, and if so, what happens to the reputation? Does it get lost? Awarded on association?

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    I don't think this is a duplicate question. This question what happens if a bounty is awarded to an "authorless" answer (say via migration) and the author later associates an account. The proposed duplicate asks what happens to reputation awarded from a bounty if the question is later migrated.
    – user642796
    Aug 21, 2015 at 6:12
  • I've edited my question to make it clearer; I don't think it's a duplicate.
    – jimsug
    Aug 21, 2015 at 6:13
  • The answer on the dupe still holds: "The user who was awarded the bounty loses the full amount immediately upon migration, and the user who offered it will regain that amount once the migration stub gets deleted" /cc @Arthur.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Aug 21, 2015 at 6:15
  • @ShadowWizard But for this question the migration happens before the bounty is set, not after it is awarded.
    – user642796
    Aug 21, 2015 at 6:19
  • @ShadowWizard Really? That seems like a completely different scenario with different circumstances, if that's the answer then fair enough. But it really doesn't seem like a duplicate. And if it is, it arrives at the answer from a completely different starting point. It'd be like saying "the question is put on hold" is the answer and "what happens when a gold tag holder votes votes a question a duplicate" & "what happens when five users vote a question as off-topic" are the questions. :/
    – jimsug
    Aug 21, 2015 at 6:21
  • @ArthurFischer oh, so it is more about merging than about migration. Reopened.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Aug 21, 2015 at 6:21
  • @ShadowWizard It's a very weird edge case. For a slightly less contrived example: User987 asks a question on Site A and receives an exemplary answer by user123 who does not have an account on Site B. But the question is not on-topic on Site A, and is migrated to Site B. On Site B user987 decides to give a bounty to this exemplary answer, and it is awarded before user123 creates their Site B account. Does user123 receive the bounty reputation when they later create their associated Site B account? (I can imagine this happening when Site A is MathOverflow and Site B is Mathematics.)
    – user642796
    Aug 21, 2015 at 6:43
  • @ArthurFischer fwiw it very nearly happened, except the proposed migration source was too old.
    – jimsug
    Aug 21, 2015 at 6:53

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The bounty in this scenario functions like any other reputation gained from the post. It sits in limbo with any other reputation gained from the post. Once the author gets associated to the post, the bounty also gets assigned to the user and the automatic reputation recalc will include that bounty amount along with the rest of the votes. For these purposes, a bounty award is still recorded as a "vote" in the database, just a different type of vote.

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