5 ms·

I never understood why Github needs to 'lock' the stale issues. Isn't it possible to just 'mark' stale issues as being just that. What's the point of 'locking'?

geerlingguy 6y ago
By default the stale bot does not lock issues. And you can configure it to mark stale, then either close or not close the issue.
- ROARosen 6y ago
  OK let me rephrase that. Why do maintainers choose to lock issues as as opposed to just marking them?
  - raziel2p 6y ago
    Most likely because "me too" or "any update on this?" type comments are extremely common.
    - deathanatos 6y ago
      …perhaps if Github had a way to indicate directly on the bug that it affects you too. (And yes, most of the community is using the "thumbs-up" on the original issue to indicate that. That's a workaround for a missing feature, not a feature.)
      - suprfsat 6y ago
        All of buganizer, monorail, launchpad have a way to indicate that a bug affects you too. Launchpad literally has a button that says "this bug affects me". People simply act obnoxious and entitled for its own sake.
  - Dumbdo 6y ago
    I assume they do that do avoid comments on old issues. If they are already using bots like that they are probably barely able to respond to new issues, so comments on old issues will never be read anyways. By forcing users to open new issues, it increases the chance for replies. That's at least what I understood from bigger repositories. It's not great and most maintainers are aware of the several shortcomings of that practive, but especially in huge repositories there are so many new (and sometimes low effort) issues daily that some maintainers are simply overwhelmed.
  - zimbatm 6y ago
    Some people don't care and necro old threads, just to get the attention. They assume that it's worth pinging all the people involved in that thread, just in case somebody might know about their vaguely-relevant issue. After a while it becomes too tiresome and some maintainers decide that it's worth closing old threads.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Never understood the disdain for "necroposting" - neither here, nor in general in on-line discussions. Yes, posting in an old thread will bump it up to the top of the queue - that's the whole point. The alternative is... to start a new thread on the same topic, which now has no context and will lead to pointless re-treading of the same paths.
      - im3w1l 6y ago
        The question for me is "do I want people to read through all this old content or not? is it relevant context or suffocating baggage?". If it's somewhere in between, a middle road option is to create a new thread but link the old one.
      - derefr 6y ago
        • Sometimes there's already a newer, still-alive thread on the same subject (usually created by someone who didn't know there was already a thread on the subject, but sometimes created by someone who "wanted to avoid necroposting" and so intentionally created a new thread.) You shouldn't be posting in thread 1 about topic X, if you could instead be posting in thread N about topic X. • The older thread probably has a bunch of context given within it that's no longer relevant, and will just confuse the people trying to comment in the thread years later (e.g. requirements that are no longer valid or are already satisfied; requests/advice given in terms of architecture that's been refactored away from, or tooling that no longer exists; etc.) These threads are essentially "rotten" — only of value to a cultural anthropologist, not for driving present goals. Better to avoid reviving such a "rotten" thread, and instead to create a new thread on the same subject, where you can provide a fresh context that doesn't conflict with the previous "rotten" context. IMHO, if comment/forum systems had richer semantics, the ideal would be to have "threads of threads" (meta-threads?), where repeated discussions on the same topic exist both as distinct threads, but also viewed in the context of a larger ongoing meta-thread (sort of like threads within a channel on Slack, but where the "channel" is still just one discussion. Maybe closer to a "user story" issue-tree-node in Jira, that has individual issues nested below it.) As it is, frequently maintainers use some microformat or issue-tracker annotation to mark new issues as dups of old issues as a reason for closing them. (But I'd honestly suggest that that's backward: usually, the old issue is "rotten"; so a new issue should be allowed on the same topic; and moderators of the forum should go back to old, "rotten" issues and mark them as dups of the new issue, to allow people who find the old issue to follow the link to see the newer discussion on the same topic.)
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    The pessimistic/realist view is that issues are sometimes ignored because, though they may actually be quite important, they are a pain to deal with or the maintainer of contributors just don't want to think about them. A matter of "out of sight, out of mind" but with the benefit of being able to instantly close off new issues without begetting discussion by marking them as a duplicate of the old locked and closed issue. A roundabout and obfuscated form of the "closed: wontfix/not interested" patterns of yore. Of course that's not the main or majority reason, but it is there. And it is fair.
- joncrane 6y ago
  Closing and locking are two different things.

geerlingguy 6y ago

By default the stale bot does not lock issues. And you can configure it to mark stale, then either close or not close the issue.

ROARosen 6y ago
OK let me rephrase that. Why do maintainers choose to lock issues as as opposed to just marking them?
- raziel2p 6y ago
  Most likely because "me too" or "any update on this?" type comments are extremely common.
  - deathanatos 6y ago
    …perhaps if Github had a way to indicate directly on the bug that it affects you too. (And yes, most of the community is using the "thumbs-up" on the original issue to indicate that. That's a workaround for a missing feature, not a feature.)
    - suprfsat 6y ago
      All of buganizer, monorail, launchpad have a way to indicate that a bug affects you too. Launchpad literally has a button that says "this bug affects me". People simply act obnoxious and entitled for its own sake.
- Dumbdo 6y ago
  I assume they do that do avoid comments on old issues. If they are already using bots like that they are probably barely able to respond to new issues, so comments on old issues will never be read anyways. By forcing users to open new issues, it increases the chance for replies. That's at least what I understood from bigger repositories. It's not great and most maintainers are aware of the several shortcomings of that practive, but especially in huge repositories there are so many new (and sometimes low effort) issues daily that some maintainers are simply overwhelmed.
- zimbatm 6y ago
  Some people don't care and necro old threads, just to get the attention. They assume that it's worth pinging all the people involved in that thread, just in case somebody might know about their vaguely-relevant issue. After a while it becomes too tiresome and some maintainers decide that it's worth closing old threads.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Never understood the disdain for "necroposting" - neither here, nor in general in on-line discussions. Yes, posting in an old thread will bump it up to the top of the queue - that's the whole point. The alternative is... to start a new thread on the same topic, which now has no context and will lead to pointless re-treading of the same paths.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      The question for me is "do I want people to read through all this old content or not? is it relevant context or suffocating baggage?". If it's somewhere in between, a middle road option is to create a new thread but link the old one.
    - derefr 6y ago
      • Sometimes there's already a newer, still-alive thread on the same subject (usually created by someone who didn't know there was already a thread on the subject, but sometimes created by someone who "wanted to avoid necroposting" and so intentionally created a new thread.) You shouldn't be posting in thread 1 about topic X, if you could instead be posting in thread N about topic X. • The older thread probably has a bunch of context given within it that's no longer relevant, and will just confuse the people trying to comment in the thread years later (e.g. requirements that are no longer valid or are already satisfied; requests/advice given in terms of architecture that's been refactored away from, or tooling that no longer exists; etc.) These threads are essentially "rotten" — only of value to a cultural anthropologist, not for driving present goals. Better to avoid reviving such a "rotten" thread, and instead to create a new thread on the same subject, where you can provide a fresh context that doesn't conflict with the previous "rotten" context. IMHO, if comment/forum systems had richer semantics, the ideal would be to have "threads of threads" (meta-threads?), where repeated discussions on the same topic exist both as distinct threads, but also viewed in the context of a larger ongoing meta-thread (sort of like threads within a channel on Slack, but where the "channel" is still just one discussion. Maybe closer to a "user story" issue-tree-node in Jira, that has individual issues nested below it.) As it is, frequently maintainers use some microformat or issue-tracker annotation to mark new issues as dups of old issues as a reason for closing them. (But I'd honestly suggest that that's backward: usually, the old issue is "rotten"; so a new issue should be allowed on the same topic; and moderators of the forum should go back to old, "rotten" issues and mark them as dups of the new issue, to allow people who find the old issue to follow the link to see the newer discussion on the same topic.)
- anonymousab 6y ago
  The pessimistic/realist view is that issues are sometimes ignored because, though they may actually be quite important, they are a pain to deal with or the maintainer of contributors just don't want to think about them. A matter of "out of sight, out of mind" but with the benefit of being able to instantly close off new issues without begetting discussion by marking them as a duplicate of the old locked and closed issue. A roundabout and obfuscated form of the "closed: wontfix/not interested" patterns of yore. Of course that's not the main or majority reason, but it is there. And it is fair.
joncrane 6y ago
Closing and locking are two different things.