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

[Ben Bolker]

   Hmmm.  Why not

   person(given = "@github_user_id", role = "ctb") ?

   At least at a quick skim, I don't see anything in either _Writing R 
Extensions_ or the CRAN repository policies that gives detailed 
specifications about what's required/recommended in the 'person' field ...

   The closest I can get is ?person, which says

 > For persons which are not natural persons (e.g., institutions, 
companies, etc.) it is appropriate to use ‘given’ (but not ‘family’) for 
the name, e.g., ‘person("R Core Team", role = "aut")’.

   A github user presumably *usually* corresponds to a 'natural person' 
(but how would we know?), but it seems as though person() wants "given" 
only to be specified for mononyms <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononym>

   I guess someone could dig through DESCRIPTION files on CRAN to see 
how many mononymous people are already listed as contributing to R packages?


On 5/28/25 04:24, Martin Maechler wrote:
>>>>>> 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
> 
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-- 
Dr. Benjamin Bolker
Professor, Mathematics & Statistics and Biology, McMaster University
Director, School of Computational Science and Engineering
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