Stale bot FAQ

What is it?

It's a bot that closes issues that issues after a certain time period, usually 100 days (subject to change). First the bot marks the issue as "wontfix", then closes after 2 more days if that tag is not removed.

Why is it installed?

We receive many more issues then we can sensibly process. We perform a 10 second scan of new issues to check for important bugs in current releases, but after that we generally leave ticket to see how many interest it has or how much users*time it is costing.

Even then, a good proportion of tickets reach a point where 100 days has passed without activity, the stale bot will then start processing it.

Can I stop it being closed?

Yes, just write a comment like "bump" and then delete the comment. That will reset the activity counter for another 100 days.

If you're feeling very helpful and it's a bug report, double checking whether it still happens on the latest release is very useful in case it doesn't and you can close the ticket.

If you didn't get to the ticket before it closed, feel free to request it be re-opened. However, if it's a boundary case feature request that affect very few users it's likely not to be re-opened.

Why did you close my bug/feature request?

We didn't, the bot did. The bigger question is why has there been no interest on the issue for 100 days. As mentioned, you can stop the issue from closing if you don't feel it should.

Why don't you think my ticket is valid?

We haven't passed any judgement on the validity, or lack of, of your issue. We just haven't, probably, spent more than the initial 10 seconds looking at it.