Bear with me
Use case:
I have a list of writing assignments, and a list of writers (external to the organisation) I would like to associate to each individual assignment. The external writers would be empty personas (aren’t we all) which would be referenced only.
Optional: I would also like to maintain profiles of these authors, for reference.
Have you looked at using Tags or Custom Fields for something like this? You could even hide the “Assignee” column and move your Custom Field first in the grid, so it looks like it’s assigned to them in the traditional Asana sense. You could then use Advanced Search to filter as needed. Just a thought.
I would recommend assigning each of those items to someone who IS a member of Asana…and then using a custom field to enter the name of the external resource. The internal Asana member would then be explicitly responsible for the external resources.
Author profiles could be kept, each as a Task in a Project called “Author Profiles”. If you need the Profile handy from every task associated with the author, you could refer to the profile in each task for that author. This can be made easier by use of “@authorsname…”. (It would be great if the Custom Field for author name could contain a live link to the profile, but that is not currently possible.)