On all of my issues that have been migrated from BPO, I’m listed as a “mannequin user”. I’m fairly certain my GitHub account has always been linked to my BPO account and I usually log into BPO through GitHub as well. Is this permanent?
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Yes, it was only linked for users in the Python org for the following reasons from the new FAQ:
For issues migrated to Github from bpo where the authors or commenters are not core developers, we opted not to link to their Github accounts directly. Users not in the python organization on Github might not like comments to appear under their name from an automated import. Others never linked Github on bpo in the first place so linking their account, if any, would be impossible.
In those cases a “mannequin” account is present to help follow the conversation that happened in the issue. In case the user did share their Github account name in their bpo_ profile, we use that. Otherwise, their classic bpo_ username is used instead.
Isn’t there a way for mannequin users to convert their mannequin?
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Only if they join the python org on GitHub, they can then reclaim the mannequin account. AFAIK this is not possible for contributors that are not part of the org.
I’d like to reclaim “my” mannequin account. is it possible to join the python GitHub org, or is it only for core devs?
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It is only for core devs and triagers.
I can’t find it (maybe it was in the dev guide changes) but I thought there was a way for non-org-members if users contact GitHub support? And I thought the big push to get people to link their GitHub accounts in BPO was to allow non-Python-org-members to have their manniquins linked to their actual GitHub accounts?
LLVM solved this by creating a bz-contributor group in the org, that has (I believe) the least amount of rights possible, but still makes people in that group a member of the org.
We considered these options, but decided against it because:
- we have more users than LLVM (~35k users on bpo)
- we would have had to send out invitation to them to join the team weeks in advance
- I think pending invitations expire after a certain time and might need to be reissued
- Reclaiming mannequins (and possibly sending invitations) is a manual process
- Migrated messages still show the GitHub name when available
The mannequins are “linked” to their GitHub accounts, meaning that their GitHub id is used in messages and listed in the Nosy list at the top. We are evaluating different solutions to use this information to notify contributors, including developing an action that re-mentions them on issue edit.
The whole issue boils down to two GitHub limitations:
- It is not possible to directly subscribe other people to issues (and we got lucky that GitHub recently allowed subscription migrations for members of the org)
- Addition through mentions is possible, but always triggers an email and therefore can’t be done in bulk
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I was recently added to the Python org. Would it be easily possible for me to reclaim my mannequin user? Thank you! 
This is a nice-to-have, so no worries if the answer is no)
Done!
I also did the same for the other new triagers.
Let me know if it worked.
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Seems to have worked, thanks again!
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