Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Please gray out the usernames of automatically-imported accounts on the main Users listing

So this is kinda tricky. On one hand: what you said. I don't believe it's a breach of the license, because an attribution necessarily involves citing the author's name (or username, in this case) ...

posted 4y ago by ArtOfCode‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar ArtOfCode‭ · 2020-02-22T23:11:49Z (over 4 years ago)
So this is kinda tricky.

On one hand: what you said. I don't believe it's a breach of the license, because an attribution necessarily involves citing the author's name (or username, in this case) - §4.c is about false _endorsement_, not simply "this person wrote this". Something that implied that imported users wrote content specifically for this site would fall afoul of it, but a use of a username doesn't. That said, I can understand the concern about folks not wanting their names used without their permission on a site they know nothing about. 

On the other hand: firstly, I'm _required_ to display those names. The footer of every Stack Exchange site says "content licensed under (license) with [attribution required](https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/06/25/attribution-required/)". Part of the blog post that links to says:

> So let me clarify what we mean by attribution. If you republish this content, we require that you:
>
> 1. Visually indicate that the content is from Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange network in some way. It doesn’t have to be obnoxious; a discreet text blurb is fine.
>
> 2. Hyperlink directly to the original question on the source site (e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12345)
>
> 3. **Show the author names for every question and answer**

Emphasis mine. Point 3 there is unambiguous: I have to use the names.

Secondly, if we assume for now that this display does fall afoul of BY-SA 3.0 §4.c: graying the names out has no effect on whether or not that's a breach. Color can assist user recognition and experience, but it has absolutely no legal standing for this sort of thing. It'd need a different user display entirely with affordances that clearly lead you to find out that it's not a native user. Which brings me neatly on to...

Thirdly: it's technically difficult. This is deliberately third because that _shouldn't_ be an obstacle where it can be avoided, but this is the real world and I have to balance ideals with practicality and the time available. There's no easy way to find out whether a user is "native" or SE-imported: it's doable in small numbers, but going over a large dataset as is necessary to show the user list, it's horribly inefficient - and that's already an inefficient page. Likewise, adding a separate display for native vs. imported users adds an extra cost - a relatively small cost, but nonetheless an extra thing to develop, test, and maintain, and an extra thing to process.

So - it's not the answer you wanted, but short of someone finding a unicorn solution, I'm going to have to leave it as is for now. I hope that gives you some insight for why, at least.