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I have seen this icon a few times, and I just assumed it was a user that no longer had an account.

enter image description here

But then I saw this question which was asked only 10 minutes before I asked this one. What's the deal?

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  • the user that asked your question possibley got deleted for reasons? – Arperum Nov 2 '14 at 23:16
  • That's what I thought too. Just very odd that they asked a question only to be deleted 5 minutes later. Of course it is possible they have had an account before now as well. – Ben Nov 2 '14 at 23:17
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That's exactly what it means.

Sometimes users are deleted by mods for specific reasons. For example, unregistered accounts created purely to post nothing but spam, or overwhelming and obvious trolling. Especially when the usernames are nothing but profanity, we often just delete the 'account'.

In other cases, such as this one, it looks like the account was deleted by the user immediately after it was created. It happens. As for their reasons? enter image description here

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  • 2
    That said, in this particular case the user requested self-deletion. – badp Nov 2 '14 at 23:21
  • This particular case just strikes me as odd. So what happens to the question? – Ben Nov 2 '14 at 23:23
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    The questions and stuff stick around, there is just no rep given to the asker/answerer for the upvotes - they have effectively disassociated from the stuff. – Ash Nov 2 '14 at 23:24
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Another case in which this happens is when the question is migrated from a different site. In that case, the original asker/answerers might not have accounts on the new site.

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