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On Programmers we keep seeing questions migrated from other sites (usually Stack Overflow) that end up with the question's owner creating a new account and posting an answer to add additional information. The latest example I can think of is here.

I guess something breaks down in the association mechanism -- maybe the user doesn't register with the same OpenID or declines account association, but usually the name on the account is the same as on the question. So I wonder... would it be possible to suggest possible questions to the new user if they've been migrated and the name on them matches theirs?

Something like,

We found the following migrated questions posted by "Andrew_1510". Are they yours? Click "yes" to regain ownership of them.

[Yes] [No]

Or is there some other way we can clarify how account association works and what a user has to do to regain control of their question after it's been migrated?

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Well, this would allow anyone to create a matching account and claim ownership of any unowned question without proving his/her identity. However, I suppose that it might be feasible to tell them that they have to use the same OpenID if such a scenario is detected, but that might sound "too technical" for many SE sites.

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  • Yeah, it'll be hard to find a solution that's clear enough. At the same time, I don't think the current way works very well. It's hard to explain how to correct the situation if a person created a new account and the post ownership didn't transfer automatically.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    May 14, 2011 at 21:35

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