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

[Michael Chirico]

Thanks all. I think once we agree (1) real names for 'ctb' are not
required ('encouraged' is probably more accurate) and (2) R CMD check
will continue to emit the 'NOTE', I think there are a few options,
Martin's and Ben's both seem OK.

Ben's suggestion to check the existing author list is good, thankfully
tools::CRAN_authors_db() makes this much simpler.

tools::CRAN_authors_db() |>
  subset(
    role == 'ctb'
    & is.na(family)
    & !given %in% c("R-Core", "R-core")
    & !grepl("[0-9]|\\b([Tt]eam|[Ff]oundation|[Dd]evelopers|[Cc]ontributors|[Aa]uthors)\\b",
given)
  ) |>
  subset(select = c("given", "email", "package"))

I only see one other likely equivalent, namely {wordPuzzleR} has
'@olivory' as 'ctb' [1] (itself a typo (: ).

[1] https://github.com/cran/wordPuzzleR/blob/d28961e0803e57700988f027c246ffb6e2c038ea/DESCRIPTION#L7

On Wed, May 28, 2025 at 7:22 AM Ben Bolker <bbolker using gmail.com> wrote:
>
>    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
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-package-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>
> --
> Dr. Benjamin Bolker
> Professor, Mathematics & Statistics and Biology, McMaster University
> Director, School of Computational Science and Engineering
> * E-mail is sent at my convenience; I don't expect replies outside of
> working hours.
>
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