I’ve noticed that there is little to no use of open issues submitted by contributors. A bot was added to mark them as stale, and many were closed for other reasons. What’s the point of keeping issues running if they are just going to be closed and forgotten? Closing or outright ignoring an issue is essentially an invitation to leave. It diminishes the work of contributors who took the time to carefully fill out the required details and report a potential problem.
Nobody opens an issue for no reason. Sure, a newbie might make a mistake once in a while, but who hasn’t? Generally speaking, though, Dgraph’s open-source contributors are highly experienced and professional. Ignoring, denying, or closing an issue won’t make the underlying problem disappear. it will likely resurface in another issue down the road.
BTW, having thousands of open issues is not a problem. There’s no need to feel overwhelmed or anxious about the number. Closing issues is not a sign of efficiency, let alone productivity. On the contrary, it shows that a significant part of the community is still engaged with the product. Closing them down (Or a bot marking them as stale) sends the message: “We don’t care about your contribution.”
Even if the company has its own internal tracking tools, open-source projects have a layer of non-verbal communication built into them. Either remove the issue tracker, and we are okay with that, entirely or engage with every single issue—even if it’s just to provide a clear rejection. In my opinion, it’s more honest to eliminate the issue tracker altogether and handle bugs internally than to give the community false hope.
Cheers.