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What happens to Stack Overflow accounts when the owner dies? Is there a process for marking an account In Memoriam and allowing an account of someone who has died to remain for as long as Stack Overflow exists?

Facebook has a Memorialized account process https://www.facebook.com/help/150486848354038/ and I am wondering if Stack Overflow has something similar.

I think it would be kind of cool to have my Stack Overflow account up for years and years after I die and decades from now someone finds a question or an answer I have posted interesting.

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  • 17
    cross site dupe: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/38742/…
    – rene
    Commented Jul 7, 2019 at 18:47
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    There was a proposal last year to indicate accounts of users who had passed away, but it was bundled together with requests to lock all their posts and prevent editing which, as you can expect, was heavily disagreed with since we aren't a social network like Facebook.
    – Davy M
    Commented Jul 7, 2019 at 18:49
  • 50
    You can abandon your account, and your questions and answers will live on and people will be able to vote for them. Nothing needs to be done to your account if you die.
    – Cris Luengo
    Commented Jul 7, 2019 at 18:56
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    the same happen if you simply decide to no more be active on SO
    – Temani Afif
    Commented Jul 7, 2019 at 19:08
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    We are not a social network. We focus on the content, not the accounts. Accounts can be abandoned for any reason, and all that happens is that they no longer contribute to the collection of content we have. That’s very different from Facebook, which focuses on connecting people.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Jul 7, 2019 at 19:40
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    Although I must admit, with how antisocial I am, I'm probably more social and have a more meaningful connection to users here than I do on any social media platform I have an account on.
    – Davy M
    Commented Jul 7, 2019 at 19:42
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    @MartijnPieters while the focus may be on content that does not preclude SO being a social network as well. What's the purpose of having a Profile or a Developer Story or having a log of Activity with badges? These are all contributors towards being a social network, of having relationships within the SO framework.
    – Richard Chambers
    Commented Jul 7, 2019 at 19:59
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    Seems like you're conflating the question of what happens with a new feature for when it happens. At some level, there's no functional difference between an account which is abandoned and an account formerly controlled by someone who's deceased. The only thing the site concerns itself with are the artifacts produced when the account was active.
    – Makoto
    Commented Jul 7, 2019 at 21:07
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    I want my profile to be pretty much the same, except prefaced with "Hi, I'm dead!" Change present-tense statements to past-tense that begin with, "When I was alive..." And replace my image with a skull that looks like it's smiling. Smiles are contagious.
    – Scott Hannen
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 1:49
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    @ScottHannen You could write a program that will change your profile to "Hi, I'm dead!" unless you click a button once a week or something. That's a good idea I might do that...
    – Jason C
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 1:53
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    @JasonC Seein as it's pretty much inevitable we could all just save ourselves the time and add that to our profile right now.
    – ivarni
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 6:30
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    How about a "well played" gold badge..?
    – thebjorn
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 8:55
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    @JasonC it adds new meaning to the "Late Answers" queue
    – C8H10N4O2
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 12:19
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    When I pass, I'm going to have "In disk sleep awaiting reincarnation server" on my profile. Dangit, first thing Monday and I'm already designing a watchdog to do that for me if I ever fail to get a yearling badge.
    – user50049
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 13:40
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    This question should start with "I have died. What happens to my account now?"
    – Thomas Weller
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 15:48

4 Answers 4

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This has happened. We've come to know about it through reading the news like anyone else, or by having the user's co-workers contact us to let us know. On the public site, we don't do anything. The account (and thus attribution) to all of their contributions remain normalized.

If we're contacted by a verifiable family member, we can sometimes make some accommodations on a case-by-case basis depending on the needs and goals, but we can't offer any guarantee. This gets especially tricky if the scenario presents internationally. But, we have no plans to have a system in place where designated accounts can take certain actions.

On a Team or Enterprise instance, however, it's up to the administrator.

The part of an account that's linked to an account on a team would be left to whatever the organizational policy of that team says. That's .. not up to us. But, the two presences are completely separate for those kinds of concerns.

I think it would be kind of cool to have my Stack Overflow account up for years and years after I die and decades from now someone finds a question or an answer I have posted interesting.

Me too. And I think you can fully expect future "digital archaeologists" to really appreciate the perspective your contributions lend, and the database dumps to the Internet Archive essentially guarantee that all contributions that remained visible for at least a few months become potential time capsules in a hundred years or so.

Kinda ... humbling :) It's something I often think about.

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    yep I think about this too and am relieved I have FB friends from this site. I keep my FB open to others posting on my timeline if I die, that way I figure someone will tell the folks on here. FWIW
    – user3956566
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 13:49
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    The one reason I can think of for a death notice would be so that if someone attempts a comment to the writer of a post or comment there would be a message indicating the writer's death. That way the person doing the comment won't be expecting a response any time soon.
    – Richard Chambers
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 16:12
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    Now I want to write a script that would auto-reply to all @mentioned comments to me with some message along the lines of, "Sorry, I can't post from beyond the grave."
    – Draco18s no longer trusts SE
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 16:29
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    @RichardChambers It wouldn't have to be specific to death though; you could just show an alert on inactive accounts -- "this user hasn't logged in for X days/years/etc; their account may be abandoned and you may not get a response from them."
    – Herohtar
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 18:03
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    You can imagine other benefits too. For instance, making it permanently impossible to log in to the specified account. It could be really upsetting to friends/family if an account of a deceased person was hacked and suddenly became active again.
    – Steve Bennett
    Commented Jul 9, 2019 at 4:30
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    The problem will be likely more and more relevant with the decades. Reacting the posts of unfortunately deceased people will get away worthy volunteer effort from the system. Even if you have no plan for it today, I suggest to consider to do something in the future.
    – peterh
    Commented Jul 9, 2019 at 8:52
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    We don't deal with Information deprecation very well across the board, which means we fail to consider quite a few signals that certain questions or answers fell out of relevance and shouldn't have emphasis in site searches (or search engines) any longer. We also have to solve the issue of folks being reticent to make major edits to something when it becomes actively harmful, because they essentially need to rewrite the post. This is part of that (increasingly) urgent need for strategy. Fortunately, we're still ahead of it, for now anyway.
    – user50049
    Commented Jul 9, 2019 at 15:08
  • "This gets especially tricky if the scenario presents internationally" - hmm, why? If you're just making ad-hoc accommodations, what does the location or nationality of anyone involved matter?
    – Mark Amery
    Commented Jul 10, 2019 at 15:31
  • @SteveBennett Especially if the deceased has diamond mod privileges.
    – WBT
    Commented Jul 10, 2019 at 15:38
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(NB: this answer has been reformulated substantially since the initial downvotes)

Stack Exchange sites are not a social network, but they are still a community. Some members of a community are outstanding, leading members, contributing unlike most others. We are honouring such users while alive by reputation, badges, and special posts on meta when they're the first to reach a major milestone. I would like to be part of a community where, if such a user passes away, we take a moment of contemplation in the form of a meta post and put an obituary notice on their user page. For example, see this user on Christianity SE (who still tops the reputation leagues four years after he passed away), also active on other sites on the network. I would find it sad (and frankly disrespectful) if all we can see is that a top user (suddenly) stops contributing, leaving the community to speculate what happened.

The large majority of users are unknown to most others, and such a notice would be noise and too much work to maintain (with 10 million users, dozens to hundreds of users die daily). Compare how famous people deaths are announced in the news, not "ordinary" people's death.

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    I know that on meta, downvotes indicate disagreement — but I'm curious what part people disagree with. The first paragraph, the second, or both?
    – gerrit
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 15:21
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    Why do you think that many people would want to do anything with an account here other than just close it down? I am guessing that Stack Exchange sites don't come into most peoples minds when dealing with death as there is much less here memory wise than on a site like facebook. And besides I don't think it will be the mods dealing with it but the employees and having a policy in place could make it easier for them.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 15:25
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    @JoeW I think that if someone has contributed massively to a site, then the least the site can do if they pass away is to have a modest in memoriam, "you will be missed". Such obituaries serve a basic human need. Not of the deceased, who has no more needs, but of the rest of the community. I find that the linked example has done this well. Stack Exchange is not a social network, but it is still a community, in particular on meta.
    – gerrit
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 15:32
  • I am not saying they should or shouldn't just that I don't think that the demand for something like this will be that big. On the other hand even if someone does contribute a lot it should be up to their family (or what they informed their family of before hand) on the decision to do it which means that someone needs to reach out to SE before anything happens.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 15:35
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    @JoeW Should it be up to the family? If a colleague dies, or a friend at the sports club, do the colleagues or friends need permission from the family to print or post their own obituary notice? That's an interpersonal skills question and perhaps culture dependent, but I'm not sure that I would need permission from the family to publicly express that I miss someone.
    – gerrit
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 15:38
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    Because printing an obituary is different than memorializing an account online which has both large personal impact and legal issues which only family can properly sign-off on. Just because you are a colleague or friend doesn't mean you have any say at all in what happens to their online presence after they die.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 16:33
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    @JoeW Why does it not? Does an online community need permission from the family (legally or morally) to post an online notice that a prominent member has sadly passed away? Does the family inherit the "right to be forgotten" under GDPR? I have asked for I wouldn't know of any legal issues here (I am not a lawyer).
    – gerrit
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 17:48
  • This isn't a simple online community but a full fledge business that has to follow many different privacy laws regarding its users and as such could get into big trouble if they just did something like that at the whim of someone who claimed to be a friend/colleague. And yes family or who ever is legally designated does gain all sorts of legal rights about the deceased.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 18:07
  • @JoeW I think you misunderstand me. I never considered the scenario of someone claiming a friend of colleague reaching out and requesting this. I'm thinking of the scenario of exactly like the example I linked. Can Stack Exchange really get into legal trouble for the linked example? Seriously?
    – gerrit
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 19:06
  • Depending on who did it and how the family feels about such things I would say yes.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 19:27
  • "Stack Exchange sites are not a social network" great to know, so I won't be obligated to fill that in my US visa application
    – usr-local-ΕΨΗΕΛΩΝ
    Commented Jul 9, 2019 at 10:04
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I think at the very least SE should permanently lock the accounts of those known to be deceased. If such an account was hacked and appeared to become active again it could be extremely disconcerting for those that knew the person and it would be disrespectful to the deceased to say the least.

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    No. Zombies, vampires, and any other kind of revenant shouldn't have their account access curtailed in any way. #undead_welcoming
    – yivi
    Commented Jul 9, 2019 at 9:56
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    I don't understand the downvotes for this. I don't see any negative aspect to this?
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jul 9, 2019 at 10:03
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    @MartinSmith apparently it’s unfriendly to the nonexistent undead and that’s more important than respecting the actual dead.
    – Notts90
    Commented Jul 9, 2019 at 10:37
  • @MartinSmith maybe because forever is a long time. There will be many other Martin Smiths in the centuries to come who might prefer if accounts became reusable? (I don't know if this is the reason, I'm just speculating.)
    – craq
    Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 1:41
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    @craq user names are not unique. there are already plenty Martin Smiths. stackoverflow.com/users
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 4:54
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I think it would be kind of cool to have my Stack Overflow account up for years and years after I die and decades from now someone finds a question or an answer I have posted interesting.

The content license requires everyone to print author names and link to user profile page. I take it that this implicitly means that there must be user profile pages as long as content from them is published and your name will be displayed next to the content produced by you as well. Someone finding a question or answer from you will know it's from you.

  1. Show the author names for every question and answer

  2. Hyperlink each author name directly back to their user profile page on the source site (e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/users/12345/username)

https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/06/25/attribution-required/

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    When accounts are deleted that users content is not always deleted with the account and when that happens there is no longer a profile page to link to.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 16:35
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    @JoeW Giving proper attribution seems to be difficult under these circumstances. Maybe one could link to an archived version of the profile page then.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 17:54
  • The same case presents for disassociated posts. I fail to remember if they remain ownerless, or if the community user takes ownership. Either way attribution is at least vague in such circumstance. On the other hand that is the consequence of deletion and/or disassociation. So you choose to sign your content away by doing any such action. (Except the case you are deleted off the site for moderation reasons ofcourse)
    – Luuklag
    Commented Jul 9, 2019 at 8:32
  • @Luuklag One can either link to profile pages that do not exist anymore or one could link to archived versions of the profile pages. Just searched for my profile page on the internet archive and the most recent version there is from March 2019.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Jul 9, 2019 at 8:41
  • But when a post is disassociated I don't think you can find the original author.
    – Luuklag
    Commented Jul 9, 2019 at 9:26
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    @Luuklag but isn't a post only disassociated at the request of the author? In which case, it shouldn't be an issue.
    – Script47
    Commented Jul 9, 2019 at 9:54

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