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Stack Overflow is no more just a simple ask/answer website. For me as a consultant and manager in industry, when I want to hire an engineer, watching the profile and the score of that engineer is a valid and reliable enough proof. Therefore it would be beneficial if, when somebody accidently loses their account, if they already had proven their identity, to make it possible for them to revive their account by re-proving their identity. Then they can trust and involve themselves more in Stack Overflow. That will be good for engineers, managers and industry, and definitely Stack Overflow.

I think that it's a good idea for programmers with a higher score than a specific range to be able to have "blue ticks", especially because gathering score in Stack Overflow is long-term work.

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    The proposed duplicate is 10 years old, it's reasonable to ask that this be reconsidered.
    – Rob
    Sep 12, 2021 at 14:50
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    I don't think high-rep users losing their account and not being able to reclaim it is an issue at all. The CMs are reasonable people, and there are not that many high-rep users, so if you lose your account as a high-rep user I'm sure they can figure something out to verify you're the owner and get the account back to you.
    – Erik A
    Sep 12, 2021 at 16:02
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    What do you mean by "loses their account"? It's very difficult to accidently delete your account, and even harder for deleted accounts to be revived (in fact they can't be, but the content/rep can be re-associated with the new account)
    – caird coinheringaahing
    Sep 12, 2021 at 16:18
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    The last thing we should do is implement corrupt practices from Instagram and Twitter. Yes; I do consider Twitter and Instagram to be corrupt
    – Ramhound
    Sep 12, 2021 at 18:30
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    Please we are not a Social network. We are not like Twitter or either Facebook. We are a Q&A Platform.
    – Kevin M. Mansour
    Sep 12, 2021 at 19:37
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    "I think that it's a good idea for programmers with a higher score than a specific range to be able to have "blue ticks"..." The network already awards badges to users who have a high score in specific tags. You can see them in their profile: For example, Rob has a silver badge in the discussion tag.
    – BSMP
    Sep 13, 2021 at 19:38
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    Stack Overflow is also running a beta of collectives which includes letting companies label users as being their employees and other users as Recognized Members. This isn't identity verification as far as proving John Smith is actually John Smith but it's proof that someone claiming to work for Microsoft actually does. (It's currently not very popular based on the voting so who knows if it will last.)
    – BSMP
    Sep 13, 2021 at 20:03
  • This feature already exists - it's called Stack Overflow Jobs. Users can make a Job profile linked to their main profile. Recruiters who use Jobs can therefore know that the applicant is the user on Stack Overflow they claim they are.
    – VLAZ
    Sep 14, 2021 at 10:38

2 Answers 2

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Instagram and Twitter verify users because we want to know who it is who is saying things in some instances. If it's someone with political power or someone whose words carry weight for some reason because of their social popularity.

With Stack Exchange, however it's all about the questions and their answers. It's those we rate primarily by voting. The fact that people have reputation is, in a way, a side effect. We also of have an equivalent of verifying answers too - acceptance.

We should take great care about introducing features popularised by social networks if one of our aims is not to become one.

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Relying on Stack Overflow as a means of generic qualification of a candidate is equivalent to hiring someone just because they went to an Ivy League school.

Besides that, it's a lot harder for someone to impersonate someone like Jon Skeet since he already has the reputation. Not sure what additional value actual verification could bring.

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  • I suppose someone could try to impersonate someone who's well known in general but doesn't yet have an account here, but I've never heard of that actually happening. There's potential for there to be an issue but the most obvious stuff (pretending to be someone else and posting garbage to make them look bad) is self-correcting in that it'd lead to deletions and bans anyway.
    – BSMP
    Sep 13, 2021 at 19:35

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