Damn, we really need a new config system for CKAN that allows all config options to be defined in one place along with their defaults (and their docstrings, whether they're mandatory, any validation that gets done, etc.) Instead of having default values defined in random places in the Python code.

I'm not aware of any Right Place to define your default in CKAN currently though, so this might be the best place for now.

What I would suggest though: make the list of user names to filter a param of the function. And then the code that calls this function should read the list of users from the config file and pass it into the function That will make the function much easier to unit test, which is a very good thing. It'll also make the code clearer as the method signature would clearly show that the code has this param, and you probably would have remembered to document the param in the docstring too, whereas currently the function essentially has a hidden and not-easily-testable dependency on the config value.