As you may know, there are accounts on Scratch with only two letters in their usernames (aa, hi, k9, me). I decided to look deeper into this using the Scratch API.

aa, hi and me
Looking at the join dates of these users, we can see that aa, hi and me all joined at the same time.

aa: Joined 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
hi: Joined 013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
me: Joined 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z

OK, this could just be a coincidence. I decided to look at the user IDs

For anyone who doesn't know, the lower your user ID is, the earlier you created your account. For example, someone with user ID “123” would've joined earlier than someone with ID “12345678”.

aa: ID: 392
hi: ID: 2641
me: ID: 4036

The times suggest that they all joined at the same time.
The IDs suggest they all joined at different times.
However, there were much more than 4036 users at that time.
I decided to check the projects on hi's profile.

First project: Created October 9th 2009
Second project: Created March 21st 2011

WHAT? These dates suggest that the user “hi” had both their join date and username reset (I assume the same goes for aa and me).

k9
Joined: 2007-03-20 at 15:15:29.000Z
User ID: 6595

The only odd thing about this account is that the join date and user ID don't really match up. Apart from that, it seems like a fairly normal account.

a and r
There are two deleted accounts with only 1 letter usernames, a and r. They have a similar story to aa, me and hi.

a: Joined: 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
r: Joined: 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z

a: ID: 389
r: ID: 4899

The join dates and IDs don't match up again…

Conclusion
aa, me, a and r are extremely, extremely odd accounts.
hi is even weirder…
k9 is not that odd of an account, but there's still some mystery behind it.

Any theories/definite answers? Post about it!

Also, check out my studio if you want. I document Scratch's rarest usernames, like the ones in this post (NOT namesnipes)

I hope you all have an amazing day, bye now.

woah

Wow. You did quite the bit of research on this. I wish I had something to add, but I really have no clue. Impressive you got that much information. Good luck in learning more.

Bumped! If a Scratch Team member is reading this and you know anything about this, please tell me. Thank you!

If you look at the comments under user yt, it looks like 2 digit usernames used to be allowed sometime before Scratch 2. You could ask the user who said that for more information.

Here's a complete list of 2 digit usernames:

My best guesses as to what's going on with these accounts and their incorrect join dates.

During Scratch's early days (March/April 2007) there was no username minimum. I would assume that later in the year, the “3 character username minimum” requirement got added.

If you look at the join dates, you'll notice that all the accounts appear to have joined on May 8th, 2013.
This was one day before the release of Scratch 2.0 on May 9th, 2013 (the site had been down for maintenance during this time as the ST was making the transition from the 1.4 site to the 2.0 site.)

My best guess as to what happened with the join dates: Since the minimum username character limit is 3, and the usernames are only 2 letters long, something got screwed up with the accounts' information during the transition, resulting in the join dates being reset.

Epicness123 wrote:

My best guesses as to what's going on with these accounts and their incorrect join dates.

During Scratch's early days (March/April 2007) there was no username minimum. I would assume that later in the year, the “3 character username minimum” requirement got added.

If you look at the join dates, you'll notice that all the accounts appear to have joined on May 8th, 2013.
This was one day before the release of Scratch 2.0 on May 9th, 2013 (the site had been down for maintenance during this time as the ST was making the transition from the 1.4 site to the 2.0 site.)

My best guess as to what happened with the join dates: Since the minimum username character limit is 3, and the usernames are only 2 letters long, something got screwed up with the accounts' information during the transition, resulting in the join dates being reset.

That could've happened. Thanks for sharing your theory!

imfh wrote:

If you look at the comments under user yt, it looks like 2 digit usernames used to be allowed sometime before Scratch 2. You could ask the user who said that for more information.

Here's a complete list of 2 digit usernames:

-snip-

Thanks for the enormous list and for the extra work.

Anyway, from the wiki it says the release date of Scratch 2.0 was 5/9/2013. If I remember correctly, profile comments were added in Scratch 2.0 (correct me if I am wrong). However, on one of hi's projects, there is a comment from SEVEN years ago. Your statement, therefore has a bit of merit.

It seems the join dates for all of these projects were just reset. But is there a reason?
——–> To Be Continued…
(stupid new scratcher restrictions lol)

Woah that’s a big mystery.

You think that these are possible dummy accounts created by the ST?

MetaLabs wrote:

You think that these are possible dummy accounts created by the ST?

Yes, or it could be somebody registering random accounts for no apparent reason.

imfh wrote:

If you look at the comments under user yt, it looks like 2 digit usernames used to be allowed sometime before Scratch 2. You could ask the user who said that for more information.

Here's a complete list of 2 digit usernames:

aa
ao
bj
cj
dk
dp
dv
ee
FB
gl
hi
it
jc
jj
jm
jq
JR
kc
kd
kg
k9
LT
lu
me
mo
mq
mt
na
nj
no
qq
Q9
ra
rd
rr
sa
si
ta
tg
tu
tv
vh
ya
yt

As the quote above lists evidence of users existing as possible answers to this question(in the first post of this topic), most of these users are probably just test accounts or another Scratcher randomly creating them. Some of these users do actually have projects, like @lt. Maybe there are possibly more users in this user list that do have projects and maybe even has an image for their profile picture, rather than the default ones.

Epicness123 wrote:

My best guesses as to what's going on with these accounts and their incorrect join dates.

During Scratch's early days (March/April 2007) there was no username minimum. I would assume that later in the year, the “3 character username minimum” requirement got added.

If you look at the join dates, you'll notice that all the accounts appear to have joined on May 8th, 2013.
This was one day before the release of Scratch 2.0 on May 9th, 2013 (the site had been down for maintenance during this time as the ST was making the transition from the 1.4 site to the 2.0 site.)

My best guess as to what happened with the join dates: Since the minimum username character limit is 3, and the usernames are only 2 letters long, something got screwed up with the accounts' information during the transition, resulting in the join dates being reset.

I agree with this statement, but this probably only happened to 2 character usernames. Maybe the 3 character minimum for usernames caused the filter and the Scratch user database to get messed up.

EDIT: What I said about the data getting messed up with only 2 character usernames doesn't happen to users with capital letters in them.

Did you create an account just to post this?

dude341 wrote:

Did you create an account just to post this?

Possibly, based on the username of the creator of this topic(@InterestingUsernames).

dude341 wrote:

Did you create an account just to post this?

LOL nope. I'm kind of going to come back.

Also, bump.

On scratch stats it says the account “hi” was created at may 9th 2013 4:58:35am I think this was just before downtime was lifted for Scratch 2.0 (correct me if I was wrong) so yeah I think it was the transition caused a weird thing in the data base to reset the join dates of usernames with only 2 letters in them!
I'm going to do some research now update when I found out more info!

OK just found some really good evidence look at their first project it has the published date as “Oct 08 2009” so they must've joined then or joined before then!

InterestingUsernames wrote:

As you may know, there are accounts on Scratch with only two letters in their usernames (aa, hi, k9, me). I decided to look deeper into this using the Scratch API.

aa, hi and me
Looking at the join dates of these users, we can see that aa, hi and me all joined at the same time.

aa: Joined 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
hi: Joined 013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
me: Joined 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z

OK, this could just be a coincidence. I decided to look at the user IDs

For anyone who doesn't know, the lower your user ID is, the earlier you created your account. For example, someone with user ID “123” would've joined earlier than someone with ID “12345678”.

aa: ID: 392
hi: ID: 2641
me: ID: 4036

The times suggest that they all joined at the same time.
The IDs suggest they all joined at different times.
However, there were much more than 4036 users at that time.
I decided to check the projects on hi's profile.

First project: Created October 9th 2009
Second project: Created March 21st 2011

WHAT? These dates suggest that the user “hi” had both their join date and username reset (I assume the same goes for aa and me).

k9
Joined: 2007-03-20 at 15:15:29.000Z
User ID: 6595

The only odd thing about this account is that the join date and user ID don't really match up. Apart from that, it seems like a fairly normal account.

a and r
There are two deleted accounts with only 1 letter usernames, a and r. They have a similar story to aa, me and hi.

a: Joined: 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
r: Joined: 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z

a: ID: 389
r: ID: 4899

The join dates and IDs don't match up again…

Conclusion
aa, me, a and r are extremely, extremely odd accounts.
hi is even weirder…
k9 is not that odd of an account, but there's still some mystery behind it.

Any theories/definite answers? Post about it!

Also, check out my studio if you want. I document Scratch's rarest usernames, like the ones in this post (NOT namesnipes)

I hope you all have an amazing day, bye now.

WOAH

InterestingUsernames wrote:

As you may know, there are accounts on Scratch with only two letters in their usernames (aa, hi, k9, me). I decided to look deeper into this using the Scratch API.

aa, hi and me
Looking at the join dates of these users, we can see that aa, hi and me all joined at the same time.

aa: Joined 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
hi: Joined 013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
me: Joined 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z

OK, this could just be a coincidence. I decided to look at the user IDs

For anyone who doesn't know, the lower your user ID is, the earlier you created your account. For example, someone with user ID “123” would've joined earlier than someone with ID “12345678”.

aa: ID: 392
hi: ID: 2641
me: ID: 4036

The times suggest that they all joined at the same time.
The IDs suggest they all joined at different times.
However, there were much more than 4036 users at that time.
I decided to check the projects on hi's profile.

First project: Created October 9th 2009
Second project: Created March 21st 2011

WHAT? These dates suggest that the user “hi” had both their join date and username reset (I assume the same goes for aa and me).

k9
Joined: 2007-03-20 at 15:15:29.000Z
User ID: 6595

The only odd thing about this account is that the join date and user ID don't really match up. Apart from that, it seems like a fairly normal account.

a and r
There are two deleted accounts with only 1 letter usernames, a and r. They have a similar story to aa, me and hi.

a: Joined: 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
r: Joined: 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z

a: ID: 389
r: ID: 4899

The join dates and IDs don't match up again…

Conclusion
aa, me, a and r are extremely, extremely odd accounts.
hi is even weirder…
k9 is not that odd of an account, but there's still some mystery behind it.

Any theories/definite answers? Post about it!

Also, check out my studio if you want. I document Scratch's rarest usernames, like the ones in this post (NOT namesnipes)

I hope you all have an amazing day, bye now.

How do you actually find out your user ID and date joined etc? I am confused

rosy-cloud wrote:

InterestingUsernames wrote:

As you may know, there are accounts on Scratch with only two letters in their usernames (aa, hi, k9, me). I decided to look deeper into this using the Scratch API.

aa, hi and me
Looking at the join dates of these users, we can see that aa, hi and me all joined at the same time.

aa: Joined 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
hi: Joined 013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
me: Joined 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z

OK, this could just be a coincidence. I decided to look at the user IDs

For anyone who doesn't know, the lower your user ID is, the earlier you created your account. For example, someone with user ID “123” would've joined earlier than someone with ID “12345678”.

aa: ID: 392
hi: ID: 2641
me: ID: 4036

The times suggest that they all joined at the same time.
The IDs suggest they all joined at different times.
However, there were much more than 4036 users at that time.
I decided to check the projects on hi's profile.

First project: Created October 9th 2009
Second project: Created March 21st 2011

WHAT? These dates suggest that the user “hi” had both their join date and username reset (I assume the same goes for aa and me).

k9
Joined: 2007-03-20 at 15:15:29.000Z
User ID: 6595

The only odd thing about this account is that the join date and user ID don't really match up. Apart from that, it seems like a fairly normal account.

a and r
There are two deleted accounts with only 1 letter usernames, a and r. They have a similar story to aa, me and hi.

a: Joined: 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
r: Joined: 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z

a: ID: 389
r: ID: 4899

The join dates and IDs don't match up again…

Conclusion
aa, me, a and r are extremely, extremely odd accounts.
hi is even weirder…
k9 is not that odd of an account, but there's still some mystery behind it.

Any theories/definite answers? Post about it!

Also, check out my studio if you want. I document Scratch's rarest usernames, like the ones in this post (NOT namesnipes)

I hope you all have an amazing day, bye now.

How do you actually find out your user ID and date joined etc? I am confused

For date joined, you hover your mouse over the text next to your profile pic that says how long you've been on Scratch. I'm not sure about the user ID though. I think you have to put some code into the console.

honeybreeze wrote:

rosy-cloud wrote:

How do you actually find out your user ID and date joined etc? I am confused

For date joined, you hover your mouse over the text next to your profile pic that says how long you've been on Scratch. I'm not sure about the user ID though. I think you have to put some code into the console.

For user ID, you can go into the Scratch API. For example, https://api.scratch.mit.edu/users/aa >> “id”:392

oh look 100th post yay woo

InterestingUsernames wrote:

As you may know, there are accounts on Scratch with only two letters in their usernames (aa, hi, k9, me). I decided to look deeper into this using the Scratch API.

aa, hi and me
Looking at the join dates of these users, we can see that aa, hi and me all joined at the same time.

aa: Joined 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
hi: Joined 013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
me: Joined 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z

OK, this could just be a coincidence. I decided to look at the user IDs

For anyone who doesn't know, the lower your user ID is, the earlier you created your account. For example, someone with user ID “123” would've joined earlier than someone with ID “12345678”.

aa: ID: 392
hi: ID: 2641
me: ID: 4036

The times suggest that they all joined at the same time.
The IDs suggest they all joined at different times.
However, there were much more than 4036 users at that time.
I decided to check the projects on hi's profile.

First project: Created October 9th 2009
Second project: Created March 21st 2011

WHAT? These dates suggest that the user “hi” had both their join date and username reset (I assume the same goes for aa and me).

k9
Joined: 2007-03-20 at 15:15:29.000Z
User ID: 6595

The only odd thing about this account is that the join date and user ID don't really match up. Apart from that, it seems like a fairly normal account.

a and r
There are two deleted accounts with only 1 letter usernames, a and r. They have a similar story to aa, me and hi.

a: Joined: 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z
r: Joined: 2013-05-08 at 16:58:35.000Z

a: ID: 389
r: ID: 4899

The join dates and IDs don't match up again…

Conclusion
aa, me, a and r are extremely, extremely odd accounts.
hi is even weirder…
k9 is not that odd of an account, but there's still some mystery behind it.

Any theories/definite answers? Post about it!

Also, check out my studio if you want. I document Scratch's rarest usernames, like the ones in this post (NOT namesnipes)

I hope you all have an amazing day, bye now.

Interesting research. Maybe a Scratch Team member could clear this up?