Multi-user account cross posting on both Stack Overflow and Code Review

Question

I answered a question today on Stack Overflow from which one of the commenters mentioned that this user had already posted his question several times on Stack Overflow during the past 24 hours, with several user accounts.

The user account on SO has been deleted (I do not know why though). Maybe it was flagged as a multi-user account, or the user deleted his own account.

When reviewing the Code Review questions just now, I found a question so similar to the one I answered on SO today, though perhaps a more basic version, as it was 2 days ago. It was, however, made by a different user.

Was I correct in custom flagging the post on Code Review, remarking that this post was made by a user that had been deleted from Stack Overflow already?

Answer 1

Thanks for asking.

I'm the moderator that reviewed (and declined) your flag.

Anyone can create as many accounts as they want. One fellow moderator even has a 2nd account used by the site's main chatbot - nothing inherently wrong with multiple accounts.

...as long as the accounts don't interact. Sock puppet accounts are a whole different story, and sock puppet voting is definitely grounds for suspension and nuking of the sock puppet account(s).

I don't know what happened on SO, but the user's CR account has nothing to worry about.

Flagging wasn't wrong at all IMO - if you suspect something fishy is going on, as a regular user you have no way to dig any much further. In this case there was nothing suspicious going on, which is why I declined the flag with the canned reason I declined it with.

Cheers!