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if it's just a comment, that'd require the person who posted it to interact in one way or another. but i think it also wouldn't make much sense if it posted an answer that wasn't an answer
– Kevin B
Commented Jul 1 at 14:25
2

@KevinB I'm proposing using a tracker that is actually designed for the job, rather than shoehorning it into the SE Q&A software. They're already using a tracker anyway! It's just private. If it was made public, and configured effectively, then old requests no one cares about anymore would be taken care of automatically.
– curiousdannii
Commented Jul 1 at 14:42
2

meta.stackexchange.com/questions/401033/… vaguely asks for that. I do feel like where some feature requests are pending for extended periods of time though, autoclosure might mean community requests occationally end up dying of neglect and old age
– Journeyman Geek
Commented Jul 1 at 15:06
1

@JourneymanGeek I've seen it work well on Github where anyone can respond to keep the ticket alive. If it's configured like that then even if the original poster disappears the ticket won't have to be closed.
– curiousdannii
Commented Jul 1 at 15:15
17

"a bot could just post after a year of no activity "Is this still an issue?", and if there is no response, close it after a week." I don't intend to try and reproduce errors for the whim of a bot. Some of the bugs I've found are tricky to capture and report - they take time and effort. If SE are not willing to invest it by looking into the bugs, then it's better to purge the whole of [bug] rather than make users jump through hoops: "It reproduces the bug or it gets closed again!" is not what I want a bot to be telling me for taking the time and effort to report something.
– VLAZ
Commented Jul 1 at 16:53
6

One of the more frustrating experiences of interacting with issues on GitHub, which is a formal tracker, is dealing with "stale issues" bots. I strongly oppose bringing such a system here; time alone is pretty much orthogonal to whether something should be addressed, and it penalizes longer-lasting, harder to diagnose issues. Age might make it less important, but I don't think it's a very strong indicator in of itself.
– zcoop98
Commented Jul 2 at 15:54
9

Honestly, while a lot of the posts we reviewed were routine (concerned decomissioned products, e.g.), most required actually sitting down and reading the issue to decide whether it was still relevant, and whether it still/ever needed staff attention. Fully automated bulk actions are always a bit of a risk when it comes to issue reporting. If you're curious, here's a picture of the flowchart I created for folks to use when validating open issues. (We didn't stick strictly to this; more meant as a helpful guide than a rigid process.)
– Slate StaffMod
Commented Jul 2 at 19:23

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