Stale contributor still appearing in repository homepage sidebar after history rewrite

[drishtiisharma]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

Body

Hi everyone,

I'm facing an issue with the Contributors section on my repository homepage:

Repository: https://github.com/drishtiisharma/Python

An alternate GitHub account, cookieeslayer, continues to appear in the repository's homepage Contributors sidebar, even though its commits have been removed from the current main branch history.

I've already investigated this and verified the following:

• Git history: git log --all revealed three commits authored by cookieeslayer. These commits exist only in an old local backup branch (backup-before-author-fix), not in the current main branch.

• Current branch: All commits on my current main branch are authored by drishtiisharma.

• Remote branches: Running git ls-remote --heads origin confirms that GitHub has only one remote branch: main.

• Contributors API: The GitHub Contributors API (/repos/drishtiisharma/Python/contributors) returns only drishtiisharma.

• Insights --> Contributors: The official Contributors graph also displays only drishtiisharma, with no reference to cookieeslayer.

Despite all these checks, the repository homepage sidebar continues to display cookieeslayer as a contributor.

This has persisted for several weeks, so it doesn't appear to be a temporary statistics refresh delay.

Has anyone encountered a similar discrepancy between the Contributors API, Insights graph, and homepage sidebar? If so, how did you resolve it?

I'd prefer not to rewrite or modify my existing commit history again, since the current remote history and contributor statistics are already correct.

Any technical guidance would be appreciated.

Thank you!

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[drishtiisharma]

Update: Resolved!

I managed to resolve this issue without rewriting the commit history again.
Sharing the steps and findings in case someone else encounters the same problem.

What I initially observed

An alternate GitHub account, cookieeslayer, continued to appear in the Contributors section on my repository homepage, even though:

• All commits on my current main branch were authored by drishtiisharma.
• The three old commits attributed to cookieeslayer existed only in a local backup branch, not on the remote repository.
• git ls-remote --heads origin confirmed that GitHub had only one remote branch: main.
• The GitHub Contributors API returned only drishtiisharma.
• Insights → Contributors also displayed only drishtiisharma.

The discrepancy was limited to the repository homepage sidebar.

What I checked and changed

1. Verified the local and global Git identities:

   git config --show-origin --show-scope --get-regexp "^(user|author|committer)\.(name|email)$"

2. Updated the global Git identity to match the correct account:

   git config --global user.name "drishtiisharma"
   git config --global user.email "drishti.1106@gmail.com"

3. Enabled user.useConfigOnly locally to prevent Git from silently falling back to an unintended identity:

   git config --local user.useConfigOnly true

4. Verified the effective author and committer identities:

   git var GIT_AUTHOR_IDENT
   git var GIT_COMMITTER_IDENT

5. Created a test commit and confirmed that GitHub correctly attributed it to drishtiisharma.

6. Deleted the obsolete local backup branch:

   git switch main
   git branch -D backup-before-author-fix

7. Verified the reachable commit history:

   git log --all --format="%h | %an | %ae | %s"

   All reachable commits were now attributed to drishtiisharma.

The actual fix

I followed a suggestion from another discussion on the same topic and tried renaming the repository's default branch:

1. Renamed main to main-refresh through GitHub's Settings → Branches.
2. Renamed main-refresh back to main.

After completing the rename and restoring main as the default branch, the stale cookieeslayer contributor entry disappeared from the repository homepage sidebar!

Conclusion

The issue appears to have been caused by stale contributor information in GitHub's repository homepage display.

Renaming the default branch and then restoring its original name triggered the refresh needed to resolve the discrepancy in my case.

No force-push, commit-history rewrite, or repository recreation was necessary.

Hopefully this helps someone facing the same issue!