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I understand the reasons why you cannot delete a question that has answers as the people who posted the answers did so in good faith, but how about being able to disconnect your user account from the question or make the person who asked the question anonymous?

Let's say (as an example) I asked a question on car maintenance that I no longer want to come up when someone does a search on my profile as I am looking for a new job and actively posting on stack overflow so they may think that what I posted on the other site was dumb/stupid/offensive/some other reason?

It would be good if you could make you you user account 'Anon' with a stock icon for just that question. Obviously you will no longer receive notifications about this question but so what? As long as you have accepted an answer it doesn't really matter.

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  • Why would a prospective employer consider a question about car maintenance to be stupid or offensive? And if they did, would you really want to work there? I don't understand how this feature request is useful.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 10:58
  • Just change your display name, this way nobody will be able to find your previous questions unless he knows your new nick.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 10:58
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    @Shadow: And unlink your accounts. (Unless he means that he asked a question about car maintenance on Stack Overflow. In which case...use the "delete" link.)
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 10:59
  • @Cody good point, better IMO to just change the name in all SE sites he's member of.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 11:05
  • @Cody - the car maintenance was just an example!
    – Matt Wilko
    Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 11:31
  • @Shadow - that would change all questions on the linked site instead of just the one in question which you want to anon
    – Matt Wilko
    Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 11:32

2 Answers 2

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It's already "implemented". Works on request.

See: How do I remove my name from a post, in accordance with CC:WIKI?

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This is something I've been wondering for awhile...

Why isn't this presented as an option within your profile? Perhaps a unified list of all posts (questions, comments and answers) where the user can selectively disassociate from themselves? Check a box next to a post, and click a button?

To prevent abuse, it would be necessary to

  • Include these actions as worthy of inspection on the review page
    • Good likelihood these will be low quality, and thus fodder for cleanup
    • Potential for trolling is high, as you can float a turd and then quickly leave the scene of the crime
  • Community ♦ to track multiple disassociations
    • As it does edits and deletions
    • Multiple disassociations would indicate something odd is going on
  • The action should be undoable by a moderator
    • The original user should be tracked silently in an area not released in data dumps, similar to votes.

I think implementing this would be keeping more with the spirit of the CC:WIKI rather than the current method.

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  • 1
    potential for ragequit abuse would be ASTRONOMICAL. Would not support, F----.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 14:00
  • @JeffAtwood: How is that abuse? If you want to ragequit, so what? Are you concerned about users regretting it and then coming back to bug you for their old accounts back?
    – user1228
    Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 14:55
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    It's happened multiple times. Loaded guns should be kept in locked boxes and for that matter the ammunition should be in yet another different locked box..
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 15:24
  • It's not beaten to death until we say it's beaten to death!
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 15:28
  • @Jeff You can still keep the account association in the background with down-votes affecting their rep etc, but other users cannot see who it is they are down-voting?? You can still flag / report them based on comments they have written...
    – Matt Wilko
    Commented Jul 14, 2011 at 11:09

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