Credit policy

How contributor credit works

HOL Guard credits the people behind its development. This page explains, in plain language, who is eligible, how credits are verified, what the states mean, and how to get something corrected or removed. Recognition is attribution-only: it never involves points, payments, or accounts on this site.

Who is eligible

Any account with verifiable public work that was accepted into Guard appears in the contributor directory. Identity is the public numeric GitHub account id — the permanent key — with your current public handle displayed on top. Organizations, automation, and deleted accounts are listed with explicit labels and never presented as people.

Roles

  • Implementation: Code that shipped in Guard — features, fixes, and infrastructure.
  • Docs: Documentation that shipped: guides, references, and READMEs.
  • Tests: Test suites and test infrastructure that shipped.
  • Design: Design work that shaped shipped interfaces or materials.
  • Review: Substantive review that shaped an accepted change.
  • Translation: Translations that shipped.
  • Research: Research that informed shipped work.
  • Release editing: Editorial work preparing a release for publication.
  • Security research: Security research credit. While an embargo is active, the credit is withheld from public surfaces.

Recognition states

Every credit carries an explicit state, shown on profiles exactly as recorded:

  • Accepted: The work is verified and recognized; no release carries it yet.
  • Merged, awaiting release: The work is attached to a specific pending release.
  • Released: The work shipped in a published release. This state is history — shipped releases are immutable.
  • Removed before release: The work was dropped from a pending release before it published. The record survives and may be re-accepted for a later release.
  • Published acknowledgement: The credit was published through an acknowledgement surface without a release vehicle.

Works, deliveries, and milestones

One original work can travel through several delivery pull requests and several releases — for example a change and its backport. Profiles therefore show two distinct numbers: distinct original works, and deliveries. They are never merged into a single "contribution count". First-contribution and first-release milestones have no volume thresholds; they are shown only when a complete-history inventory has provably covered the account, and omitted otherwise.

Evidence

Every credit carries a link to the public artifact that proves it, verified by exactly one of: pull-request authorship, a verified direct-commit author, or a verified co-author trailer. Thanks text, display names, commit emails, release publishers, asset uploaders, and committer fields are never used as evidence, and this site never fetches GitHub on a page view — profiles serve the last verified snapshot.

Recognition without a GitHub account

There is none, by design. Work that cannot be tied to a public account id by one of the accepted evidence methods is not credited, rather than guessed. This keeps every credit checkable and protects unattributed contributors from misattribution.

Corrections and removal

Contributors can request a correction (wrong handle, wrong roles, missing co-credit) or removal (suppression) of their credits at any time. Open a topic on the public hol-guard repository or contact the maintainers through the channels on our contact page. Suppression is a durable decision: once recorded it overrides replays, backfills, caches, and editorial rollbacks, and a suppressed profile or credit is removed from public serving entirely — not just hidden from search.

Recognition FAQ

GitHub usernames can change or be deleted; the public numeric account id cannot. Every profile lives at /guard/contributors/<numeric-id> and shows the current public handle on top, so recognition survives renames and never collides.

No. Recognition derives only from public numeric GitHub account ids with verifiable evidence. Work that cannot be tied to a public account id by one of the accepted evidence methods is not credited, rather than guessed.

They are listed, but never presented as people. Accounts typed as organizations or automation appear in a separate section with an explicit label, both visually and in the page structure.

No. Badges have no count, word, or volume thresholds of any kind. They appear only when a complete-history inventory has provably covered the account; otherwise they are omitted entirely rather than guessed.

A release can only be compared with an earlier PUBLISHED release on the same channel. A git tag alone is not a release. When the earlier point of the lineage cannot be verified as a published release, no comparison is linked.

Ready to look around? Browse the contributor directory or the release history.