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How to keep displayed usernames unique even if the user account is deleted?
Motivation
On Stack Exchange (SE) I could have a really hard time following a discussion in comments between multiple users if one of the users deleted their account or changed their username.
Here on Codidact, this "problem" seems to be handled much better as the username seems to change when a user deletes their account or changes their username.
Here is an example of the current behavior (from here):
The username (shown as "deleted user") is even still clickable (hyperlink retained)!
Then it's much easier to follow a thread, but what if there are two (or more) deleted users chatting in the thread? How to make the discussion still understandable?
Proposal
So the question is: How to keep displayed usernames unique even if the user account is deleted?
A solution could be to assign a unique number to the username after deletion, e.g. "deleted user #9999999" (but I'm not aware of the implication of such a feature because even if the account is deleted, all user activity can be easily traced...).
(BTW, currently the clickable link related to the deleted user name redirect to the top of the current page (also in comment thread view), maybe it would be better to redirect to a page related to account management or something but it will be harder to maintain... EDIT after an answer: this redirection to top page is a reported bug)
1 answer
Every user already has an associated unique number (it's in your profile URL). The easiest way to distinguish user names for deleted users would be to use that number. This is what SE does.
A consequence of this approach is that this means that anyone who knew your user number before you deleted your account would be able to identify you afterwards. I don't know how much of a problem this is in light of "right to be forgotten" laws in parts of the world. Even without a legal motivation, I'm unsure of the ethical considerations. If people want to be done with us and delete their accounts, should we make them completely anonymous? The single "deleted user" name does that, at the cost of some confusion.
If we want uniqueness and anonymity, then I guess we would need to generate a new number and associate it with the old (deleted) account. Profiles are soft-deleted, so that they remain available if needed for auditing, spammer investigations, and so on. Deleted profiles aren't linked and that link you're seeing is a bug, so thanks for the report.
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