fix: show initials instead of guessing a GitHub avatar - #33
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When a member had no stored avatar, the member card and the members page loaded https://github.com/<username>.png. That is the current owner of the username on GitHub, which is not always the member: a renamed or reclaimed username shows someone else's photo. It also made every visitor's browser request github.com. Members without a stored avatar now show their initials, which the avatar component already falls back to. The profile preview image for shared links is dropped for the same reason: it was built from the username in the URL, whether or not that member exists. Signed-off-by: voidash <ashish.thapa477@gmail.com>
On the member card and in the members table the name is shown next to the avatar, so screen readers read the initials and then the name. The initials are now hidden from assistive technology there. The account menu is unchanged: its avatar is the button's only content. The profile page description said "approved public profile" for any username in the URL, including pending, hidden and non-existent ones. It is now a neutral description. Signed-off-by: voidash <ashish.thapa477@gmail.com>
abhiyandhakal
approved these changes
Sep 27, 2026
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What this changes
Members without a stored avatar now show their initials. Before, the member card, the members page and the profile's shared-link preview used
https://github.com/<username>.png, which shows whoever owns that username on GitHub today.Closes #32
How to check it
mainand this branch were run side by side on the same data:maingithub.com/*.pngon/en/en/membersog:imageon a profile pageOn
main, two local sample members showed the photo and identicon of unrelated real GitHub accounts that happen to hold the same usernames. With this branch they show initials.lint, typecheck, test (135 passed) and build all pass.
Checklist
*.test.tsxconfig from fix(auth): show sign-in only when signed out #30. A test can follow once fix(auth): show sign-in only when signed out #30 is merged.