[R-pkg-devel] Best practices for a contributor who prefers to be cited only by their GitHub ID?

[Michael Chirico]

Hello,

We recently started receiving contributions from a user who prefers to
only use their GitHub ID.

I tried this entry in DESCRIPTION (with their actual ID):

person(comment=c(github="@github_user_id"), role="ctb")

But R CMD check complains:

* checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ... NOTE
Authors using R field gives persons with no name:
  [ctb] (github: @github_user_id)

Is this actually disallowed for the 'ctb' role, which does not appear
in the package citation? I can see the need for more transparency
around the 'cre', 'aut', and especially 'cph' roles.

What is the best practice in this case? Should I just write fake
names, or do we require the user to divulge a real name? I don't see
this discussed in WRE or ?person.

Michael Chirico