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This question was left as a comment under the question Any visible indication that a user is unregistered (apart from profile page)? Bounty disappears with cookie?:

Why is there no indication of an unregistered user?

Well I've done it again and that's on me. But still, has there been any thought of maybe adding a tiny "U" or a small black corner to the icon, or writing the user name in gray font, or some other indicator or symbol or even a hovering reveal?

I understand that one can go to the user profile to check, but it would be handy to have a quick notification on the page of interest.

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    I use SoX for this. Enable the feature "Show when the post's author was last seen and whether they are registered in the comments section". (There are a lot of other helpful features to use in it.)
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Dec 14, 2017 at 6:01

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Because most of the time, it doesn't matter. Unregistered users can do all the important stuff:

  • answer questions
  • respond to comments on their answers
  • edit their answers or suggest edits to other's posts
  • they can even ask questions on most smaller sites.

The whole purpose of allowing folks to participate without registering is to lower the bar to entry, to invite folks with knowledge to share it when they stumble across a place that needs it during their travels. There's no particular value for them or anyone else in branding them as outsiders when they do so.

For the handful of situations where it does matter, the information is readily available on their profile. Note that your situation - offering a bounty - isn't one of them, as animuson noted in his answer to your previous question.

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  • OK thanks. I think I've demonstrated a niche reason - unregistered accounts from some users sometimes "migrate" or are replaced by registered accounts. But perhaps this is an edge case with n_users of order unity.
    – uhoh
    Dec 14, 2017 at 5:58

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