Code of Conduct

• I have read and agree to the GitHub Docs project's Code of Conduct

What article on docs.github.com is affected?

N/A; I tried searching for similar content but couldn't find any, so I think this would be a new entry.

What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?

N/A; see above, I believe this might be an entirely new article.

Additional information

I recently noticed that some issues on a public repo I contribute to (but don't have direct repo access to) seemed to disappear; getting a 404 when I tried to access them. I also noticed that when I tried to view the user that contributed them, I also got a 404 for their profile.

I reached out to GitHub support to find out if the information in those issues was lost:

• https://support.github.com/ticket/personal/0/3664339

There is a public repo that I contribute to, and there was an issue that I know was previously visible, that now returns a 404:

• Suggestions : Alternative Models, Batch and Auto-renaming jehna/humanify#84

Looking up the user that created that issue, they also 404 now:

• https://github.com/REDACTED

Yet looking at a different issue I created, that links to/references the now missing issue:

• Add support for OpenAI Flex Processing jehna/humanify#406 (comment)

I can still see the title of the previous issue:

Why is that issue no longer visible / accessible to me? Is this a bug, or has the user deleted their account / been blocked by GitHub / similar (and if so, would that remove any issues / comments / etc they've made on public repo's like this?)

To which support replied:

Hello Glenn,

Thank you for contacting GitHub support. The issue is hidden, not deleted and this is due to the account status of the user who opened the issue, not a technical issue on GitHub's side. For privacy reasons, I cannot share more details, but would recommend the user in question reach out to support for additional information.

Please let me know if there is anything else I can help you with.

Kind regards,
REDACTED

I then asked:

Thanks REDACTED; that makes sense.

I understand that you can’t speak about that individual user; but more generally; if a user account was deleted / similar; would that result in issues on public repos like this getting hidden / removed / similar? Or would they go into some sort of ‘unowned’ state but still exist.

The main reason I ask is I want to know whether the information on issues that account opened may end up ‘lost’ in an instance like that? (And if so; whether I may need to make regular backups of data submitted on issues to avoid the potential of that happening)

Thanks.

Glenn

Support then confirmed:

Hello Glenn,

Deleting the account would not remove or hide the associated issues.

Kind regards,
REDACTED

Finally I asked:

Ok, cool, thanks for confirming that; good to know.

Are there any docs describing what situations would cause issues to disappear from a public repo like this?

And in this case, I'm not an owner/maintainer of the repo; but assuming something similar happened on a repo of mine, would I still be able to see the issues? Or would I also lose access to them until whatever was resolved on the user's side of things?

Basically we've ended up losing access to valuable information related to the project (possibly temporarily) due to this; and I want to understand what the 'risk factor' is for something like this happening again in future; particularly on repo's I own.

If I as a repo owner was still able to see those issues (and they were just not visible to random non-repo-admins), that would be far less concerning to me than if it was lost entirely.

I haven't yet heard back from support about that; but given I couldn't find any docs for it when I searched, I figured I would proactively open an issue here for it.

Another example I found on StackOverflow that would have benefitted from a more explicit GitHub docs page to reference was:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40427127/github-what-happens-with-the-commits-if-the-user-is-removed/79734956

Basically, as an open source contributor, I want to understand under what circumstances I might lose access to issue contents / etc that are valuable for my project (or one that I am contributing to) when the user who created it is deleted / suspended / similar.