Sidebar contributor list shows cached contributor though Insights graph is clean

[badhon1010]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

Body

Hi GitHub Community,

I am facing an issue where a removed contributor ("claude") is still showing on my repository's homepage sidebar (Contributors section shows 4 contributors), even though the git history has been cleaned up and the Insights > Contributors graph is completely updated and clean.

• Repository URL: https://github.com/badhon1010/thesis-crew
• Current state:
  1. All branches (local and remote) containing the unwanted commits were deleted.
  2. The Insights > Contributors tab is accurate and only lists the actual authors (no longer lists "claude").
  3. However, the repository overview sidebar still lists "claude" and displays 4 contributors instead of 3.

The two unreachable/orphaned commits were:

• f80facc3d489a78f170e12954ef477fbc247e264
• d7f6f5a01023895707bec472af2566a1e13250a5

Both show the warning: "This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository."

Could GitHub staff or a moderator please advise on how to invalidate/refresh the homepage sidebar contributor cache, or trigger a repository cache rebuild so the sidebar matches the Insights graph?

Thank you!

[github-actions[bot]]

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[somuai]

This happens because GitHub uses two different data sources for contributor information:

1. Insights > Contributors and REST API (/repos/somuai/somuai/contributors): These query the commit graph reachable from the default branch dynamically. Since your commits were rewritten and the branch deleted, this view is already accurate.
2. Repository Homepage Sidebar ("Contributors" widget): This relies on an aggressively cached materialized summary in GitHub's database. When branches are deleted or history is rewritten via force-pushing, the background worker that invalidates and rebuilds this sidebar cache is often not triggered.

Furthermore, orphaned commits like f80facc and d7f6f5a are kept in GitHub's internal object store (and referenced by internal pull request or ref logs), but they are no longer reachable from main.

To force GitHub to recalculate and rebuild the homepage sidebar contributor list immediately without waiting for background garbage collection:

Option 1: Toggle the default branch (most reliable method)

This forces GitHub's repository service to purge and recompute all default branch metadata:

1. Create a temporary branch from main and push it:

   git checkout -b temp-cache-bust
   git push origin temp-cache-bust

2. Go to your repository Settings > General on GitHub.
3. In the Default branch section, click the switch icon (two horizontal arrows) and change the default branch to temp-cache-bust.
4. Once updated, switch the default branch back to main.
5. Delete the temporary branch:

   git push origin --delete temp-cache-bust
   git branch -D temp-cache-bust

Switching the default branch immediately purges the cached contributor widget and re-indexes only the commits reachable from main.

Option 2: Push an empty commit to main

If you prefer not to touch repository settings, pushing a standard forward commit to main emits a normal push event that queues the repository stats recalculation worker:

git checkout main
git commit --allow-empty -m "trigger contributor stats rebuild"
git push origin main

Allow 5 to 10 minutes for the worker to process the push event and update the sidebar widget.

[badhon1010]

It works. Thank you so much.