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

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Michael Chirico 
>>>>>     on Tue, 27 May 2025 10:38:59 -0700 writes:

    > 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

I think this is a very valid question,
and hopefully one we can resolve positively (unfortunately,
I'm not sure this will happen .. given past experiences and
world politic etc ..).

If there's nothing better, using
  "Anonymous", "Contributor",  (before the `comment=<....>` part) 
would work I think
and also not be misleading IMO.

Martin