When clicking on the share button below a question or answer, the number after the last slash is the id of the user creating the link. The link also works without this last part. Why does SX include user information in the link?
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1various statistics are gathered "behind the scenes", including how many of a participants suggestions are viewed by other participants. this is just one of the possible bits of information collected. – barbara beeton Sep 20 '16 at 17:09
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2(I guess) related: meta.tex.stackexchange.com/q/4527/34551 – Clément Sep 20 '16 at 18:50
There are some badges which are awarded for your promoting the site (Announcer, Booster and Publicist). These work by using links with your ID in them: the site can only know that you've done some promotion if there is data to show this. Of course, you can happily delete the user ID part of the link: they still work just fine.
answered Sep 20 '16 at 17:10
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4There is currently no way to track the progress for these badges: View progress towards Announcer, Booster, and Publicist badges – Werner Sep 20 '16 at 19:52
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The amount of effort for badges, questions for badges, statistics for badges, backend coding and on and on is really blowing my mind on SO Meta. – percusse Sep 21 '16 at 1:10
