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This question is about something I expected to have been asked before, but I could not find anything, neither on physics.SE nor on general meta. Apologies if I have missed something. I started thinking about the topic after reading the recent question How to Help the Physics.SE grow (member-wise)? Qualitatively as well as Quantitatively , which is concerned with the loss of professional users.

I would like to know if one can extract a "professional account" from a currently existing one. That is, I would (potentially) like to create a new account that contains a selected high-quality subset of my contributions here, without the two accounts being visibly associated. I am interested both in whether this is a supported feature (e.g. by asking the moderators to arrange it) and whether it is something one should do/something the community supports.

Background: I started using physics.SE relatively early in my undergraduate and have now progressed to practicing physics at a more "professional" level (not quite there yet, but getting there). Initially, I mainly participated for fun, asked a lot of questions about things I did not understand and answered where I felt I could contribute. While I would not delete any of my answers or questions, the quality of many of my contributions is not on the level that I would want to be associated with my professional activity. In addition, I have participated in other Stackexchange sites, such as rpg.SE, which I would certainly not want to appear, for example, on a CV (related question on that topic: Is Physics SE on your CV?).

Is this something anyone else has been thinking about or do only I have this problem? Should I just start a new account from scratch? Should I go through all my old contributions in a review fashion? Or is the extraction of contributions into a professional account someting feasible/wanted? If it is not something currently supported, should it be a feature?

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    $\begingroup$ I personally don't see a functional difference between a "professional account" and "professional level contributions". I wouldn't think there's much benefit in separating your account to rename it into something more "professional" or anything. If you wanted to make your physics account seem more professional without disclosing too much about yourself, another option might be editing your profile on Physics SE to explain your education and/or topics of interest. Take this with a grain of salt I guess though, since I'd consider myself a non-professional without a profile. $\endgroup$
    – JMac
    Commented Mar 8, 2020 at 16:38
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    $\begingroup$ For the other accounts that you don't want to show up - you can set accounts on sites to "hidden", so that they are no longer shown in the list of your account on other sites $\endgroup$
    – ACuriousMind Mod
    Commented Mar 8, 2020 at 16:46
  • $\begingroup$ @ACuriousMind: that is certainly helpful already. Maybe my question is pointless then... I will think about whether this is what I want. $\endgroup$
    – Wolpertinger
    Commented Mar 8, 2020 at 17:01
  • $\begingroup$ @JMac: thanks for sharing your view! I agree, but the reason I asked this question is that I am considering disclosing more information. Since I am not happy to do so with my current account for the reasons stated, I was thinking about alternative options other than creating a completely new account from scratch. $\endgroup$
    – Wolpertinger
    Commented Mar 8, 2020 at 17:01
  • $\begingroup$ You can certainly ask for detaching posts from your account. $\endgroup$
    – user249968
    Commented Mar 8, 2020 at 17:15
  • $\begingroup$ As a hiring manager for PhDs in a variety of technical fields, I can categorically state that I have never looked to see if a candidate were active on SE. Nor am I going to start, period. $\endgroup$
    – Jon Custer
    Commented Mar 9, 2020 at 1:50
  • $\begingroup$ @JohanLiebert that would be helpful! Is that something you ask the moderators to do then? $\endgroup$
    – Wolpertinger
    Commented Mar 9, 2020 at 7:53
  • $\begingroup$ @JonCuster Makes sense, that goes a bit in the direction of the linked question about listing SE on one's CV. I guess that makes a "professional" account additionally useless... $\endgroup$
    – Wolpertinger
    Commented Mar 9, 2020 at 7:54
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    $\begingroup$ @Wolpertinger I once read a meta post mentioning that for doing so you have to ask community managers.... Wait I would search and give you some appropriate links. $\endgroup$
    – user249968
    Commented Mar 9, 2020 at 7:55
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    $\begingroup$ Here: 1) Could we have a Help Center page on disassociating posts? , 2) Disassociated posts are still linked from the network profile, 3) Can we have a moderator only "flag for community team/developer attention" link on posts?. $\endgroup$
    – user249968
    Commented Mar 9, 2020 at 8:05
  • $\begingroup$ Do tell me if this helped or not. Also you can ask about it on Tavern on the Meta $\endgroup$
    – user249968
    Commented Mar 9, 2020 at 8:09
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    $\begingroup$ I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because there is already a sufficient set of options to deal with a) disassociation of old posts and b) hide other network profiles. $\endgroup$
    – Wolpertinger
    Commented Mar 9, 2020 at 10:12
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    $\begingroup$ For what it's worth, I've been on this site for longer, and produced hundreds of questions and answers that are "not professional level", and I have no intention of hiding that. This is the nature of posting on the internet. All the people who might matter in my professional life have better things to do than trawl for posts I made when I was a college sophomore. As for drawing attention to your greatest hits, these people won't care how many HNQ bumps you got, either. $\endgroup$
    – knzhou
    Commented Mar 10, 2020 at 5:03
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    $\begingroup$ Feel free to make a new account and only post higher-level stuff there (following the voting rules, of course), but do keep in mind that if you get into this habit, it's very likely that in 2 years, you'll find your current answers naive and unprofessional, and want to restart again. $\endgroup$
    – knzhou
    Commented Mar 10, 2020 at 5:06
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    $\begingroup$ Im some sense, making a new account comes at no risk: If you change your mind later, you can still have your accounts merged. $\endgroup$
    – Norbert Schuch
    Commented Mar 12, 2020 at 21:48

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