XMB Forum Software

User merge admin feature (and a 'list threads by user' page)

flushedpancake - 10-22-2026 at 07:18 PM

So I was looking at the member list and noticed I have eight ****ing accounts on this board for some reason made over the span of more than a decade.

D---------D (6/2/2016), 7 posts
D------------r (23/10/2016), 5 posts
V-----a L----a (15/6/2017), 2 posts
Scarlet (15/9/2017), 60 posts
b-------92 (5/1/2018), 4 posts
k---------37 (26/3/2018), 2 posts
C---a (20/5/2023), 4 posts
flushedpancake (1/4/2024), 170 posts

= 254 posts total.

Which begs the question, should we have a user merge functionality for these kinds of cases? I think out of the main free forum suites only myBB has it, neither phpBB nor SMF has this.

(Also, since I seem to just write whatever's on my mind at any given time, and not have any real coherence in making threads relevant, here's another idea to dump, be able to view all threads that a user has created. Easiest way to do this would be to adapt the forum viewer's query to 'WHERE poster=$person', sort by the first post date, and ignore the status of topped threads)

miqrogroove - 10-24-2026 at 04:11 PM

Threads from user is a popular feature. That would be a good suggestion to put in the bug tracker.

What is the use case for merging users? If I already know these users have different identities linked to different e-mail addresses, why would I ever merge them?

flushedpancake - 10-24-2026 at 04:53 PM

Quote: Originally posted by miqrogroove  
What is the use case for merging users? If I already know these users have different identities linked to different e-mail addresses, why would I ever merge them?

In case someone loses both their password and email, and registers a new account. Then they can have their old post history, data, etc linked back to the new one seamlessly.

Talking about why I have eight different accounts lying around is not really relevant for this thread and only serves to drag up talk of ancient drama from foreign circles. I'd prefer not to.

miqrogroove - 10-24-2026 at 07:02 PM

I don't see how this is anything other than account theft. When someone loses their email and password we don't give their data to someone else.

flushedpancake - 10-25-2026 at 06:58 AM

Eh, case settled then. I won't argue about a slew of old accounts I operated years ago, most of which I don't even have access to anyway now. You're right, it's kinda pointless

(Though, as the next post will prove, I actually do happen to have access to the email of one of them. By the way, having a 20-character minimum limit on passwords does not change the fact it accepts 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa' as a password.)

DixieKongJD - 10-25-2026 at 07:08 AM

derp.