Thanks to @Melos, in https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/380420/ we killed two birds with one stone, and added a class to the links to user pages when they belong to non-existent accounts. The class is mw-checkuser-nonexistent-user and only the username is given that class.
Let's discuss how to make these usernames visually distinctive. We could, for instance, make them look in grey (to indicate they are not real users).
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | None | T177793 Make links to non-existent accounts visually distinctive in CheckUser | |||
| Resolved | Melos | T170507 CheckUser "contributions" link should be a red link for non-existent accounts |
@Huji When would one encounter links to user pages for non-existent accounts in CheckUser currently?
@Niharika you encounter it when a user tries to create an account but fails (due to AbuseFilter throttling account creation, or TitleBlacklist disallowing the account name).