Ghost contributor (estiven1903) still shows on repo homepage after force-push

[WinbowJi]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

Body

Repository: https://github.com/telson-dev/pteropilot

Problem: the homepage "Contributors" sidebar still shows a
contributor estiven1903 who has no commits in the repository, two
days after a force-push rewrote the offending commit.

Details:

• Only one reachable commit on main (0146e0f), author WinbowJi.
• /repos/telson-dev/pteropilot/contributors and
  /stats/contributors both return only WinbowJi.
• A dangling commit 991e98c85fc6393dc9e557aef871128099660d21 is
  still fetchable via the commits API. Its author email
  17133863+WinbowJi@users.noreply.github.com had a wrong numeric ID,
  so GitHub maps it to estiven1903.
• That commit was rewritten with git commit --amend --reset-author
  and force-pushed; it is reachable from no branch or tag.

Request: please run garbage collection / refresh the contributors
index so estiven1903 disappears from the homepage sidebar. Thanks!

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[kittimzhe]

This is the same pattern as #208778 and #208950 — and your own evidence shows the mechanism: the rewritten-away commit (991e98c…) is still fetchable through the commits API, which means something still holds it even though no branch or tag reaches it. For a force-pushed PR branch, that's typically the hidden refs/pull/* ref from the original PR — those aren't deleted by a force-push and don't show in the branch list.

The homepage Contributors sidebar is computed and cached separately from /contributors and /stats/contributors (which is why yours already read clean), and it keeps counting commits reachable through those hidden refs — including ones attributed via the noreply-email ID mismatch you diagnosed.

Nothing repo-side clears it: another force-push won't help, and you can't delete refs/pull/* yourself. The fix is the same purge process used for sensitive-data removals — GitHub support clears the PR refs and refreshes the cached views. When you open the ticket:

• list the old SHA (991e98c85fc6393…) and the PR number that held it,
• point out that /repos/telson-dev/pteropilot/contributors already returns only WinbowJi — proves the reachable history is clean and isolates the fault to the sidebar cache/hidden refs,
• ask specifically for the PR refs to be purged and the contributors sidebar to be reindexed.

That framing routes it as a data hygiene purge instead of a generic "contributor still shows" question, which tends to get bounced as "wait for the cache to update."

[kittimzhe]

This is the same pattern as #208778 and #208950 — and your own evidence shows the mechanism: the rewritten-away commit (991e98c…) is still fetchable through the commits API, which means something still holds it even though no branch or tag reaches it. For a force-pushed PR branch, that's typically the hidden refs/pull/* ref from the original PR — those aren't deleted by a force-push and don't show in the branch list.

The homepage Contributors sidebar is computed and cached separately from /contributors and /stats/contributors (which is why yours already read clean), and it keeps counting commits reachable through those hidden refs — including ones attributed via the noreply-email ID mismatch you diagnosed.

Nothing repo-side clears it: another force-push won't help, and you can't delete refs/pull/* yourself. The fix is the same purge process used for sensitive-data removals — GitHub support clears the PR refs and refreshes the cached views. When you open the ticket:

• list the old SHA (991e98c85fc6393…) and the PR number that held it,
• point out that /repos/telson-dev/pteropilot/contributors already returns only WinbowJi — proves the reachable history is clean and isolates the fault to the sidebar cache/hidden refs,
• ask specifically for the PR refs to be purged and the contributors sidebar to be reindexed.

That framing routes it as a data hygiene purge instead of a generic "contributor still shows" question, which tends to get bounced as "wait for the cache to update."