<p>Deleted users used to be changed to something like "user_12345" (number chosen for illustration only), and you were still able to e.g. view the edit history of such a user. This is an important feature for the community to understand what someone has done (imagine e.g. a vandal making 20 edits then asking for his account to be deleted - you still want to be able to identify which edits they made).</p>

<p>However, for reasons I failed to identify in the code, deleted users now show up with the user name "deleted" (e.g. <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/37413625">http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/37413625</a>), and no hyperlink.</p>

<p>This is definitely a recent change but I cannot pinpoint where and when exactly it was introduced.</p>

<p>Requesting the raw XML for such an object still reveals the "user_12345" name, but then requesting that user's history through a link like <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/user_12345/history">http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/user_12345/history</a> yields an error message as well. It would be desirable to be able to access the user's history in this way even though the account was deleted.</p>

<p>This might not be such a recent change but in March this year it was definitely still possible to access deleted users' histories in this way.</p>

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