Who is this user #0?

Question

I typed https://stackexchange.com/users/0 and found there is a user with #0 named RAKESH KUMAR.

Community user is user #-1
Jeff Atwood is user #1

Who is this user #0? Are they a co-founder or developer of SE or SO? Or is this some kind of bug? They don't have any SE account (may be deleted later ?)

@Luuklag strangely enough also this user: gis.stackexchange.com/users/147015/tyler-larsen (found with a quick SEDE query: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1393076?accountid=0) — rene, Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 8:17
Related "user 0" Q&As: meta.stackexchange.com/a/352629/282094 meta.stackexchange.com/q/286756/282094 meta.stackexchange.com/a/325779/282094 — Rob, Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 9:18
Thank you Luuklag, rene and Rob. But how that user was assigned a number 0? According to this post there's no user with #0 in SE. This user joined SO 1 yr, 8 months ago. Then how did they get a number 0? — 19aksh, Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 10:11
And this post was posted before the user with ID #0 created their account. So is this a bug? — 19aksh, Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 10:19
Also there’s raw 404 page for +, not the same as regular 404 page. E.g. for -. — αλεχολυτ, Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 10:35
@Luuklag btw, RAKESH KUMAR has more than 1000 profile views on SO. Large enough for user without any action. Even after noting here. — αλεχολυτ, Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 10:45
@rene I searched for the name on SO and then matched one from the 16 pages based on the profile image. It appears to be a verry common name. But perhaps this is related to account merges? — Luuklag, Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 11:55
@Luuklag yeah, account merge is possible but IIRC there is some race condition and db inserts taking place that are not all governed by a transaction. I expect it didn't create the network account on time and then the accountid stayed at is default, being 0. And with that the userprofile got inserted in the db with 0 as accountid. Maybe there are networkaccounts that have 0 user profiles linked to them. They can't handle success — rene, Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 12:05
@Ollie Yes. They haven't been using SO since 2019, and their account is gone now! Was it deleted by mods? 🤔 — 19aksh, Commented Apr 3, 2021 at 14:10

animuson · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-03 14:14:29Z

16

There were actually two users with a network account Id set to 0, both of them created at about the same time. I can only imagine that there was some short-lived glitch in the database back in 2019 that has not reoccurred. Both the profiles have now been deleted, given it's pretty much impossible to track down a real account or what happened without a correct account Id to investigate.

answered Apr 3, 2021 at 14:14

animusonStaffMod

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5

This has re-occurred: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/411548/…

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
– Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

2025-07-20 05:18:41 +00:00
Commented Jul 20 at 5:18

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