Any visible indication that a user is unregistered (apart from profile page)? Bounty disappears with cookie?

Question

I just left comments and a +100 'thank-you` bounty both here and here at answers from an author of the paper linked in my questions.

I'd thought that bumping a known expert (the posts were invited) might encourage them to stick around, and this gave them the opportunity to start adding comments right away.

Later I found out that both posts were made by the user in "unregistered" mode. Oh well, so much for my community outreach effort.

Is there some visual UI cue that the user is unregistered available when looking at the post? Moderators have diamonds, rep and other info are displayed with users' ID throughout SE whenever there is space, but the unregistered status seems to be invisible.

This might be helpful before awarding bounties or even comments directed at the poster, because the unregistered user loses all access as soon as their cookie cache is cleared.

I'm not requesting a new feature, just trying to understand if there is some way to know if a user is unregistered without a separate visit to their profile page.

Also, I'd just like to confirm what I think I've figured out, that a bounty awarded to an unregistered user is lost once the user clears their cookie cache? So this may not be such an advisable thing to do?

Answer 1

No, there is not any indication that the user is unregistered from the post view. You can only find that information by viewing their profile page.

But, the bounty is not lost. Even if they lose the cookie that ties them to their unregistered profile, it is still possible to recover that profile through merging. We do this pretty much every day, and it's an incredibly easy process as long as they use the same email address that they gave us when they posted. If they do come back, they'll likely claim the answer and inherently the bounty.