Hello! I've noticed that if an Issue is not assigned a Label on Git, it is generally not worked. I've logged a few Issues over a period of time and I see that they are configured to auto-close after specified length of time. In order to prevent the Issue from closing, you have to comment on it.
So my question is: If the Issue is not applied a Label before the it auto-closes, is it worthwhile to keep commenting on it to keep it open?
This is not a criticism of issue/feature prioritization, just wondering if I should keep commenting on Issues to keep them open.
Thank you!
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Its a mixture of different things really.
The critical bugs tend to get labelled and fixed pretty quickly (or at least anything that is really obviously unintended behaviour in the app).
A lot of people use GH to log support issues or individual problems that aren't necessarily bugs as well as feature requests/enhancements which obviously won't get labelled.
Somethings things simply get missed but there is also a grey area of things which aren't technically bugs but just behaviour the user doesn't necessarily expect for which unless there is a clear goal/agreement to "fix" the issue then it too won't get a label.
The bot does close legitimate issues though (e.g. https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/4999 and https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/5605). I've personally given up on bumping issues, as it's just too troublesome and, to be frank, too annoying. It's understandable that people don't want obsolete issues hanging around, but having to fight with the bot every month is just too much.
I think that is one of the grey area ones that straddles the line between "bug" and "enhancement". To me it sounds like missing functionality rather than unintended behaviour of the application.
Well, if that's the case, then it would really be better if a real person replied and closed the issue with an explanation why. Otherwise, the user only gets annoyed by the bot and is probably very unlikely to open another issue in the future (which hopefully isn't the actual intention).
From my experience, especially when it comes to accessibility-related issues, they are usually ignored/forgotten unless developers themselves are affected and care enough to fix them. The same is true for multilanguage usage (and specifically different keyboard layout usage), as most people are monolingual or at least they don't need to switch keyboard layouts, so they don't care.
It certainly isn't anything intentional to drive people off. I added some extra wording into the bot to remind people that issues or enhancements should be done via the forum rather than GH. I think there is a balance of being over-zealous and closing things (which annoys people) and keeping them open for discussion but without a tag to mark it as something to be actioned.
Personally I've not been able to monitor it much over the last few weeks for various personal reasons but I was certainly trying to make an effort to engage with new issues, get further details etc. so that it can be better maintained. I agree there can/should be some more effort here to make it less frustrating.
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