doc: add section stating that very stale PRs should be closed

[dario-piotrowicz]

I just wanted to open this PR to see if there could be some consensus on closing PRs that
have been state for a significant amount of time (I'm proposing 6 months here, this is very
arbitrary and can definitely be changed/generalized).

The fact is that the number of current PRs in the project, as I am opening this one is 492,
although that's not very problematic it feels rather messy to me (without providing any
noticeable value I think?), having a clear policy on when a PR is so stale that it should probably
be closed could be beneficial in trying to clean outdated and stale PRs without the risk to
generate too much controversy (since right now, as far as I can tell, abandoned PRs just stay
there indefinitely and there isn't a clear procedure on what to do with them).

[nodejs-github-bot]

Review requested:

• @nodejs/tsc

[Trott]

Do we not already have a GitHub Action that closes stalled pull requests automatically? https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/fe5817e06ca81f0388d448287e60e2ca49c3cba3/.github/workflows/close-stalled.yml (Maybe it's not functioning as expected?)

[Trott]

Here's a PR from November that was closed by the GitHub Action. #51611 Maybe the Action needs to be adjusted to be less cautious, but I don't think we should add documentation instructing people to do this manually.

[Trott]

Oh, I see, the GitHub Action requires people to manually add the stalled label. This should probably instruct people to do that rather than having two different official-ish processes. (Or, if we're going to prefer manual closing, than we should probably disable the automation. I prefer the automation myself, but either way is fine. But let's keep it to just one way.)

[dario-piotrowicz]

@Trott Thanks for the comment, I wasn't aware of the automation for the stalled label, sounds great, and since it runs every day yes I don't really see any benefit in the manual closing then 🙂👍

[nodejs-github-bot]

Commit Queue failed

- Loading data for nodejs/node/pull/57541
✔  Done loading data for nodejs/node/pull/57541
----------------------------------- PR info ------------------------------------
Title      doc: add section stating that very stale PRs should be closed (#57541)
Author     Dario Piotrowicz <dario.piotrowicz@gmail.com> (@dario-piotrowicz)
Branch     dario-piotrowicz:dario/contributing/stale-prs -> nodejs:main
Labels     doc
Commits    3
 - doc: add section stating that very stale PRs should be closed
 - Update doc/contributing/pull-requests.md
 - Update doc/contributing/pull-requests.md
Committers 2
 - Dario Piotrowicz <dario.piotrowicz@gmail.com>
 - GitHub <noreply@github.com>
PR-URL: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/57541
Reviewed-By: Yagiz Nizipli <yagiz@nizipli.com>
------------------------------ Generated metadata ------------------------------
PR-URL: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/57541
Reviewed-By: Yagiz Nizipli <yagiz@nizipli.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   ℹ  This PR was created on Wed, 19 Mar 2025 00:12:09 GMT
   ✔  Approvals: 1
   ✔  - Yagiz Nizipli (@anonrig) (TSC): https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/57541#pullrequestreview-2711584587
   ✘  This PR needs to wait 27 more hours to land (or 0 hours if there is one more approval)
   ✔  Last GitHub CI successful
   ℹ  Green GitHub CI is sufficient
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   ✔  Aborted `git node land` session in /home/runner/work/node/node/.ncu

https://github.com/nodejs/node/actions/runs/14045059860

[Trott]

I added two trivial edits before approving, so it would be good if someone else could approve (or re-approve) before landing. Otherwise, I think this is ready to merge.

[nodejs-github-bot]

Landed in b4280ef