Set a label rather than closing issues

[probonopd]

To some, a robot trying to close stale issues may seem inhospitable or offensive to contributors. But the alternative is to disrespect them by setting false expectations and implicitly ignoring their work. This app makes it explicit: if work is not progressing, then it's stale. A comment is all it takes to keep the conversation alive.

Would setting a label rather than closing issues be possible? That way, inactive issues would not be hidden from developers' view, but instead an additional label would draw their attention to stale issues that need it.

[issue-label-bot[bot]]

Issue-Label Bot is automatically applying the label feature_request to this issue, with a confidence of 0.58. Please mark this comment with :thumbsup: or :thumbsdown: to give our bot feedback!

Links: app homepage, dashboard and code for this bot.

[luc-github]

it is already possible according doc, no ? https://github.com/probot/stale

# Number of days of inactivity before an Issue or Pull Request with the stale label is closed.
# Set to false to disable. If disabled, issues still need to be closed manually, but will remain marked as stale.

So daysUntilClose: false

and

# Label to use when marking as stale
staleLabel: wontfix

so

staleLabel: NeedAttentionOfDev

[probonopd]

Ah, even better. In this case, could it be made the default?

I mean, the point should be to get the stale stuff fixed rather than ensure it will stay stale forever!?

[luc-github]

you must do your stale.yml according your needs - I do not understand what you mean by

could it be made the default

[probonopd]

I see many projects where the Stale bot just closes issues that have had no posts in some days. It would be nice if the default behavior would be not to close those, but give them a label.

[luc-github]

This is each owner choice - they configure the stale.yml as they want - the doc is pretty clear when you read it IMHO including : https://github.com/probot/stale#is-closing-stale-issues-really-a-good-idea

[jidanni]

Sure, for you young whippersnappers, closing issues automatically is only natural.

But for older users who are in and out of the hospital (for longer periods than stalebot default settings), when they return to their desks to find their issues all automatically closed, it sends just one message: Don't bother with the project (that uses stalebot.)

[stale[bot]]

Is this still relevant? If so, what is blocking it? Is there anything you can do to help move it forward?

[probonopd]

@Stale this is the irony of the day.

Not doing anything is never a good rationale for thinking something has magically "fixed itself" without doing anything. In my humble opinion, the decision to wontfix something should be a careful decision by the Product Owner.

[jidanni]

(Indeed. Let's say certain aircraft manufacturer issues included "fix potentially critical fuselage stress" that got closed automatically before anybody could get a chance to work on it.)

[vdh]

I have a personal loathing of seeing this bot show up because of how hostile this setting can behave. It's become a plague across the platform where a couple of days of inactivity is enough to kill a legitimate issue due to the most common way this bot is set up across many projects.

I've seen plenty of issues where the robot is either hounding the commenters daily with useless tag adding/removing noise, or the bot sniped down the issue extremely quickly. Some issues even have plenty of constructive back and forth comments between users and devs, but the issue still remains closed, purely because the bot has set this initial expectation of "closed, go away". None of the devs commenting are motivated enough to reverse that by manually re-opening the ticket, either because it doesn't come to mind that they should reverse the mistake or they still want that "closed issue" vibe.

This bot feels extremely hostile and antagonistic in its behaviour.

[stale[bot]]

Is this still relevant? If so, what is blocking it? Is there anything you can do to help move it forward?

[stale[bot]]

Is this still relevant? If so, what is blocking it? Is there anything you can do to help move it forward?

[probonopd]

This @stale bot is an antipattern!