user434507 asked What does it mean for the file name to be shown with red background on Stack Overflow, which was closed and migrated to Super User.

This user doesn't have an account on Super User, so as expected, the username is gray, static text. Comments that this user made on an answer, though, show as "Anonymous", rather than "user434507" as would be expected. Further down in the comments to that answer, another user replied to @user (now Anonymous), which at first glance, makes it look as though there might be a missing comment.

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Shouldn't comments retain the user's name when being migrated, like the question does?

Also related, if the user were to come over and create an account, would the comment be reowned by the user? This question makes it appear that it won't (it was tagged by-design, but in the picture, it looks like the user had already associated accounts but not regained ownership of the comment).

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(Confirmed here, for a comment on the question itself.) –  Arjan Mar 25 '11 at 11:57
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2 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Since comments don't impact reputation or do any other things a post does, they're not as important in the migration process.

We won't (at this point anyway) be going so far as to hook up comments to their owner when they register for the site the question was migrated to if they didn't exist at the time of migration.

However, the situation can be better short of the association step above (which is very involved).

Starting with the next build, the owner's name (of any comment owner, not just the OP) will carry over to the destination site, even if that user doesn't exist there. An anonymous comment (from deleted users) on the source site will of course stay anonymous on the destination, but the rest should have users, and if not users at least the correct name.

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Even more: the user from the example above meanwhile is a registered user on Super User, but still their pre-migration comments are labelled Anonymous:

Anonymous user for old comment

(I'd guess this might not only apply to the OP, but also to comments left by other users who have no account at the time of migration?)

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Same here: Migrated comments should have correct display names [closed]. So it seems the question here is a duplicate of the closed question I linked to, and that one is a dupe of the question linked to in the last paragraph in question ... (What I don't understand: there are no links between those two posts in their "Linked" sections although the former is closed as a dupe of the latter.) –  Hendrik Vogt Apr 24 '11 at 14:42
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