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Completely agree with Drew here. Nothing pisses me off more than seeing an issue I care about or raised closed because it was "inactive". Just why? If issues we

by cedws 5y ago

Completely agree with Drew here. Nothing pisses me off more than seeing an issue I care about or raised closed because it was "inactive". Just why? If issues went away by themselves we'd all be out of jobs. All these bots do is piss off the consumers and make your life harder by losing discussions. They also waste the time of those who put a lot of effort into their report to be helpful, encouraging lazy spam issues to be created in their place. GitHub should remove this disgraceful bot.

fireflash38 5y ago
It also makes it so that you get a ton of effectively spam comments on an issue to keep it 'active'. That said, I guess it's got some value in that it forces someone to become a squeaky wheel by bumping an issue they want to get fixed?
- gaius_baltar 5y ago
  I then wonder if somebody has a bumpbot now, just to prevent these issues from being closed by stalebot. :)
  - techdragon 5y ago
    I was going to ... In fact I just did a bunch of research for half an hour. I picked a language, hosting, UI tools, looked up the API calls and worked out how to do most of the mechanical process behind the scenes. Despite being a decent idea and a product I'd 100% use myself, I'm not sure I should do any more work on the idea due to GitHub's Acceptable Use Policy... > 10. User Protection > You must not engage in activity that significantly harms other users. We will resolve disputes in favor of protecting users as a whole. I can see a lot of arguments that GitHub could use to label any kind of automatic "bumpbot" bot/tool/service in widespread use as violating this clause. If I was more confident it wouldn't get ban-hammered and shutdown, I'd pop back open that folder of notes and get at it.
  - remram 5y ago
    I was considering making a browser plugin to have a one-click button to comment "this issue is not going away by itself, please read it before you decide it's stale" or similar. Now that ddevault wrote this it might be a good resource to put in there. Making a completely automated bot certainly falls short of GitHub's acceptable use policy.
    - Qub3d 5y ago
      My first thought: Maybe include a link to the ddvault post in the template? On second thought... maybe not. I could see it quickly becoming a battering ram that just annoys OSS devs. Ultimately, this isn't something users can't improve, it has to be the maintainer. Nagging OSS maintainers is how we wind up with incidents like left-pad. In the most extreme of circumstances, if a maintainer is hiding issues behind the stale bot, it could be interpreted as abandonment and a fork should be made.
- smarx007 5y ago
  Em, if there are many people that care about the issue, are those comments really spam?
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    Kind of, yeah. People get emails and notifications for you to say "+1", which can be pretty annoying. It's the equivalent of writing "this" instead of just upvoting on HN.
- FooBarWidget 5y ago
  Can concur. I submitted a couple of pull requests that fix bugs. I addressed all the issues the maintainer pointed out, and then the maintainer went silent for 2 months. Every 2 weeks I spammed the thread in order to chase away the auto-close bot.
oauea 5y ago
They're just awful. I tend to abandon projects that wind up closing issues on me using bots, it's infuriating.
ryanbrunner 5y ago
Realistically, for a lot of projects, if it's open for 60 days without activity it's not ever getting fixed. If anything, things like stalebot make the issues list match the reality of the situation more closely.
- joshmanders 5y ago
  That's not true, sometimes issues get seen from notifications, not answered right away, then not revisited because it was forgotten. I've done this a few times. Sometimes a bump is a "Hey, just incase you forgot" so automatically closing is just "Ok I forgot this, but who cares now" attitude.
- Zababa 5y ago
  A lot of issues that ask for breaking backwards compatibility are usually going to be "treated in the next version". I'm glad most projects don't put out new incompatible versions every 60 days. The issue could stay here for a few years, to serve as a source of information and a reminder. Milestone: 2.0 is usually a good way to indicate that.
- remram 5y ago
  The reality of what situation? That there are no issues?

by cedws 5y ago

fireflash38 5y ago

It also makes it so that you get a ton of effectively spam comments on an issue to keep it 'active'. That said, I guess it's got some value in that it forces someone to become a squeaky wheel by bumping an issue they want to get fixed?

gaius_baltar 5y ago
I then wonder if somebody has a bumpbot now, just to prevent these issues from being closed by stalebot. :)
- techdragon 5y ago
  I was going to ... In fact I just did a bunch of research for half an hour. I picked a language, hosting, UI tools, looked up the API calls and worked out how to do most of the mechanical process behind the scenes. Despite being a decent idea and a product I'd 100% use myself, I'm not sure I should do any more work on the idea due to GitHub's Acceptable Use Policy... > 10. User Protection > You must not engage in activity that significantly harms other users. We will resolve disputes in favor of protecting users as a whole. I can see a lot of arguments that GitHub could use to label any kind of automatic "bumpbot" bot/tool/service in widespread use as violating this clause. If I was more confident it wouldn't get ban-hammered and shutdown, I'd pop back open that folder of notes and get at it.
- remram 5y ago
  I was considering making a browser plugin to have a one-click button to comment "this issue is not going away by itself, please read it before you decide it's stale" or similar. Now that ddevault wrote this it might be a good resource to put in there. Making a completely automated bot certainly falls short of GitHub's acceptable use policy.
  - Qub3d 5y ago
    My first thought: Maybe include a link to the ddvault post in the template? On second thought... maybe not. I could see it quickly becoming a battering ram that just annoys OSS devs. Ultimately, this isn't something users can't improve, it has to be the maintainer. Nagging OSS maintainers is how we wind up with incidents like left-pad. In the most extreme of circumstances, if a maintainer is hiding issues behind the stale bot, it could be interpreted as abandonment and a fork should be made.
smarx007 5y ago
Em, if there are many people that care about the issue, are those comments really spam?
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  Kind of, yeah. People get emails and notifications for you to say "+1", which can be pretty annoying. It's the equivalent of writing "this" instead of just upvoting on HN.
FooBarWidget 5y ago
Can concur. I submitted a couple of pull requests that fix bugs. I addressed all the issues the maintainer pointed out, and then the maintainer went silent for 2 months. Every 2 weeks I spammed the thread in order to chase away the auto-close bot.

oauea 5y ago

They're just awful. I tend to abandon projects that wind up closing issues on me using bots, it's infuriating.

ryanbrunner 5y ago

Realistically, for a lot of projects, if it's open for 60 days without activity it's not ever getting fixed. If anything, things like stalebot make the issues list match the reality of the situation more closely.

joshmanders 5y ago
That's not true, sometimes issues get seen from notifications, not answered right away, then not revisited because it was forgotten. I've done this a few times. Sometimes a bump is a "Hey, just incase you forgot" so automatically closing is just "Ok I forgot this, but who cares now" attitude.
Zababa 5y ago
A lot of issues that ask for breaking backwards compatibility are usually going to be "treated in the next version". I'm glad most projects don't put out new incompatible versions every 60 days. The issue could stay here for a few years, to serve as a source of information and a reminder. Milestone: 2.0 is usually a good way to indicate that.
remram 5y ago
The reality of what situation? That there are no issues?