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How should formerly secret accounts and their owners be handled?

Editing Discussions

NerdooderN Edited
#1

Before I begin, I will define what I mean by "secret account." A secret account is an account that obscures who is the true owner in some way, such as not linking to the main account or using a name dissimilar to known accounts. By "formerly secret account," I mean that the owner has publicly revealed that they operate the account some time after the account's creation. For the rest of the discussion, I will only be speaking about accounts ran by one person and not shared accounts (I think those creator tags can stay as is).

Currently there are 3 ways that formerly secret accounts are attached to their owner:

  1. The account is aliased to the owner. Example: aksk is aliased to NerdooderN
  2. The account is a child of the owner. Example: 循環 is a child of Sakurei
  3. The account is separate from the owner. Example: AKX652 has been revealed by kaishoki to be their account (source: https://scopes.hateblo.jp/entry/05_00) but the two tags are not linked together.

EDIT (June 29th, 2026): As of June 16th, 2026, the kaishoki example is no longer true. Regardless, I will keep the example as is.

I can see arguments being made for examples 2 and 3 since the content that the owner uploaded to the account follows a gimmick or is different to what they would post on main. However, I am not sure if that distinction is meaningful enough to users for them to see the secret account and the owner as separate, and therefore not be aliased to each other like in example 1. Admittedly, another explanation for case 3 is that the contributor was not aware that the account is actually an alt.

So how should formerly secret accounts be attached to their owner? Should there be exceptions for accounts whose gimmick is different from the main account?

SuperNick Edited
#2

I think if the creator themselves have publicly acknowledged the channel to be theirs, then it should be aliased. Assumptions, of course, should never be made. It's better to incorrectly have two tags for the same person than it is to have an account incorrectly merged. The exception to this would be proxy accounts and collab channels, since there is no one person to alias it too. I also feel as though a gimmick channel like Rosen YTPMV should remain separate, even if it's ran by one person, since it is heavily themed. In all cases, if the actual author of a work is publicly known, their creator tag should also be added to the video. For the purposes of what you are specifically talking about in this post, I think they should be combined.

Approximus Edited
#3

t75.2: In the case of proxy channels, I believe those videos should either be tagged as Anonymous or the creators involved

NerdooderN
#4

t75.3: I think there's value in knowing which proxy account uploaded a video, even if the account's role as a creator is ostensible. Labelling accounts as alts or proxies is speculation at best, unless the account states that it is a proxy/alt channel upfront or the owner comes out. I think it might be better to treat undisclosed/unproven accounts as separate creators to avoid labelling a legitimate account as anonymous.

__tacoguy
#5

t75.2: I've talked about it some time ago in Discord, but will repeat it in this thread too - I think proxy/team/themed accounts like camel ytpmv, SiIvaGunner or Jontron YTPMV should be left as standalone tags, having parent tags or being a parent tag for creators, as unifying them under a single author tag will turn search results into a mess. It's possible to tag creators alongside with proxy account, seems like a clean solution to me.

SuperNick
#6

t75.5: I very much agree, and this is how it is set up in the editing guidelines currently.

Alternative accounts in which the creator is known should be set as an alias to their main username. Proxy/team-run accounts such as SiIvaGunner should be given their own creator tags, and the actual authors of any works on such accounts should also be tagged if that information is publicly available.

For clarity, I am the person who wrote this, so I'm not trying to use it as proof that this way is correct or anything like that. I'm simply relaying the current site standard, as it is relevant to the conversation at hand.

__tacoguy
#7

t75.6: It is slightly different to my proposal though, with alt accounts of a single person being tagged more in a similar way to proxy/team-run accounts, same as second option in t75.1. Just sharing my perspective as a search user.

NerdooderN
#8

t75.1: After more activity on the site, it seems that case #2 is the most popular way of handling this. Some examples I've seen recently include:

The list is non-exhaustive. Now I am not familiar with these accounts, but I will assume these are secret (and true) since no one asked to merge the tags. Perhaps this practice should set the precedent (and be codified) since users seem to intuit a parent-child relationship with these accounts. I'm aware that this practice could've partly emerged from the fact that members cannot merge tags together.