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My main user ID on the Information Security site changed from 165253 to 106285 since my accounts were merged. Does this invalidate all of the share links in my posts which use my old user ID?

https://security.stackexchange.com/search?q=user:106285+url:*.stackexchange.com/*/165253

This is a lot of posts. Will I have to manually edit all ~150 of them because my accounts merged, to ensure that I earn publicity badges? I don't wish to spend many months doing a few posts a day to work around the lack of server-side automation, nor do I want to spam the front page with hundreds of bumps for posts which I have made no constructive edits to.

Edit: Glorfindel graciously offered to run his bot to automatically replace all the old links with the new one. The script has finished running and all my links have been updated. Thanks!

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  • 4
    Just for context: since May 2017, internal link shares have counted toward the requirements for the publicity badges.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Mar 7, 2021 at 7:09
  • 2
    And SE has no stable API for bots. it does, though
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Mar 7, 2021 at 10:43
  • 2
    The plot thickens! This might have triggered a bug. I now have two active chat users! They are chat.stackexchange.com/users/207492/forest and chat.stackexchange.com/users/323957/forest.
    – forest distrusts StackExchange
    Mar 7, 2021 at 11:27
  • @TheforestofReinstateMonica that bug is long standing.
    – Luuklag
    Mar 8, 2021 at 7:24
  • @Luuklag Link to MSE bug report?
    – forest distrusts StackExchange
    Mar 8, 2021 at 8:08
  • Here it is, didn't had time to look it up back then: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159938/…
    – Luuklag
    Mar 8, 2021 at 8:15
  • Thanks to a lazy answer to a Hot Network Question, I could now activate the bot. However, I'm not entirely sure internal links count for the publicity badges. Links from one Stack Exchange site to another (or from/to its Meta), yes; it's the links from Security.SE to Security.SE I'm not so sure about.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Mar 11, 2021 at 15:34
  • @Glorfindel Apparently (according to Sonic) they do now work intra-site as well as inter-site.
    – forest distrusts StackExchange
    Mar 14, 2021 at 0:19
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    @Glorfindel Shortly after I answered meta.stackexchange.com/q/134185/377214, a dev tagged it as status-bydesign.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Mar 14, 2021 at 0:53
  • @SonictheCuriouserHedgehog right, that means I have to adjust my expectancy about how many users actually click links in my posts. There are quite a few posts here on Meta which I often link to but for which I'm not an Announcer.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Mar 14, 2021 at 10:16
  • 3
    I've started to repair your links, at a rate of 1 post per three days (there's another script running on Security.SE, and I want to avoid flooding the homepage). It will repair other broken links in the posts as well (if any). You probably get an inbox notification from each edit, so if it does anything strange, just let me know.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Mar 14, 2021 at 11:53
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    @Glorfindel Thank you!
    – forest distrusts StackExchange
    Mar 14, 2021 at 23:15
  • 1
    @forestdistrustsStackExchange FYI, the script has finished and your search link returns no results.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Jan 21, 2022 at 10:02

1 Answer 1

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Yes, all of the links would need to be changed to continue counting towards your progress. While all past progress should have been rewritten to the single Id at the time of the merge, there is no concept of "forwarding" one Id to another for user profiles.

On the backend, the profile that was merged is a deleted user. It effectively changes the owner Id attached to everything on that profile (posts, comments, votes, etc) and then deletes the profile like any other user deletion once it's empty. Anything further pointing to that Id is ignored, including a profile link to the old Id which would now 404.

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  • Is there anyone I can ask with DB access to rewrite the links for me? It should be trivial.
    – forest distrusts StackExchange
    Mar 7, 2021 at 23:25
  • @TheforestofReinstateMonica You could ask a user to use a bot to do so, or make one yourself. (Just be mindful of front page bumps.)
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Mar 7, 2021 at 23:47
  • @SonictheCuriouserHedgehog Who would have a bot capable of doing that? It would be a lot easier if that could be done than writing one myself (and risking getting banned due to a bug).
    – forest distrusts StackExchange
    Mar 7, 2021 at 23:47
  • @TheforestofReinstateMonica Glorfindel runs their broken image fixer bot on all sites. I think you could get them to do it.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Mar 7, 2021 at 23:48
  • @SonictheCuriouserHedgehog Thanks! I'll try to contact him.
    – forest distrusts StackExchange
    Mar 7, 2021 at 23:49
  • @TheforestofReinstateMonica Though such a bot would not be able to fix meta posts unless it had 2k reputation on the main site (except for this site).
    – Laurel
    Mar 8, 2021 at 0:12

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