I'll admit it -- I do read Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky. When they announced stack overflow, I was intrigued and signed up for the beta. They only accept OpenID, so I decided to create a new blogger site: kevinglowacz.blogspot.com. I played around a little and it seemed like a nice concept.
About a month later I decided to start utilizing my blog. I bought this domain name (glowacz.info) and setup my blogspot account to redirect to kevin.glowacz.info. Well this means when I try to log in to stack overflow with kevinglowacz.blogspot.com it redirects and logs me in as kevin.glowacz.info. That's fine, I'd like my OpenID to be my domain anyway. I just didn't want to lose what I had done with my other account.
I looked around and saw that others had also had circumstances where their OpenID changed and they were able to get their accounts merged by emailing Jeff. I shot an email over to Jeff Atwood explaining my situation and asked him to change the OpenID on my old account to my new OpenID. I also purposefully did nothing (except post a question asking to merge my accounts) with my new account so he wouldn't have to merge anything -- he'd just have to change the OpenID on my old account.
However, instead of just changing the OpenID on my old account, Jeff took all of my questions and answers from my old account and attached them to my new account. Because of this I lost all of my profile info, my "Member for x days" data, and my esteemed "Beta Badge".
Now I don't know how they have their database set up over at stack overflow, but I have to imagine that changing the OpenID associated with my old account would have to be easier than moving all my questions and answers over to my new account. I even specifically asked for the associated OpenID to be changed instead of asking for the accounts to be merged. Clearly, Jeff Atwood has no common sense.
Posts
4 comments:
Maybe they just have a script that updates everyone's stuff the same way, not on a case by case basis. Im sure its easier to listen to a few people complain about losing profile info than everyone complaining about losing all of their questions and answers.
They probably do have a script, so it would be just as easy to merge the things associated with the newer account back to the older account. The script would just have to update the OpenID on the old account as part of its process.
This still seems the most logical because then the person keeps their original "Member for x days" as well as the original profile information they filled out.
This is kind of a douchebag post- I mean, you're ripping on someone for taking time out of their day to help you out. I understand they didn't do what you actually asked, for whatever reason, but instead of assuming it was just a simple mistake you have to rip into this guy?
tsk tsk on you.
I can see why it might seem that way completely out of context, but this is Jeff Atwood's project. No, he didn't work on this alone -- he had a lot of help, but he was the lead on this.
To a programmer, merging the wrong direction isn't a simple mistake -- it is common sense to merge the less active account into the more active account.
My opinion may be kind of harsh, but at least I have the balls to sign my name to my opinion.
Post a Comment