Meta: Add stale issue management to nodejs/help repo

[bmuenzenmeyer]

What is the problem this feature will solve?

I propose we add an automated stale check to https://github.com/nodejs/help

This repo has:

• issues dating back 4+ years
• 149 issues with zero comments, some dating back 2+ years

What is the feature you are proposing to solve the problem?

I propose we adapt the logic and lessons from nodejs/node#42085 into the help repo. A long time-to-stale can strike a healthy balance between community / search relevancy and maintainer scope.

What alternatives have you considered?

I've worked to manually close a few, following a careful manual process

• look for issues with no comments (triaging new tickets is of course useful too, but unrelated to this stale effort)
• add a comment mentioning the age, if the node version reported is still supported, and trying to point OP to a better community resource. example issue
• revisit the issues weeks later manually to see if any activity has occurred, closing if able

[Trott]

+1. Yes, please.

I'm also honestly not sure that the help repo is something we should be doing. Having an official help channel implies a commitment to staff it, and I'm not sure we do that. 149 issues with zero comments suggests that perhaps we don't. If we're actively responding to issues there and it's useful for the community, then hey, great. But if it's hit-and-miss, I'd be OK with archiving the repo and directing people to StackOverflow and/or the OpenJS Slack #ask-anything channel.

[Trott]

@nodejs/tsc

[bmuenzenmeyer]

(thanks for moving this issue here - it didn't seem right where it was, nor within help itself, and I missed this repo somehow in my brief search)

on the matter of the closing it completely... I can see arguments both ways:

• many of those 149 issues are recent-ish, so don't over-index on that
• I want to honor and respect the impact or help 3000+ closed issues

but...

• in addition to stack overflow / slack, the availability of https://github.com/nodejs/node/discussions now creates many options perhaps more ergonomic to today's community
• annecdotally, i've used node for over 10 years and never knew about this repo until I became a triager

FWIW, I liked the stale bot approach in the main repo because it looked very carefully introduced

[RaisinTen]

+1

I also like the idea of archiving the nodejs/help repo, so that these discussions can take place in other places like the OpenJS Slack, GitHub Discussions, etc, where the Node.js maintainers are organically more responsive.

[gireeshpunathil]

FWIW, the original premise for the help repo was to isolate (confirmed / potential) issue reports in the core from general q&a, guidance on application development, event-driven architecture, API usage, modules etc.

[nschonni]

It has also been useful as a place to transfer the random user issues from other repos like the website ones

[Trott]

It has also been useful as a place to transfer the random user issues from other repos like the website ones

We can leave it in place but also maybe include a note telling people they are more likely to get a decent response at StackOverflow or in the OpenJS Slack. (I'd prefer to avoid suggesting people use the core repo discussions feature for the reasons mentioned by @gireeshpunathil and would be in favor of disabling discussions in the core repo, but not so strongly that I'd argue over anyone else's unease about it. I know @bnoordhuis often moves issues to discussions when they are not bugs but someone seeking help, so maybe he would prefer we keep discussions around, for example.)

[nschonni]

Maybe in addition to the Stale job, something like https://github.com/marketplace/actions/welcome-new-users could be used to nudge them to those other places

[bmuenzenmeyer]

Irrespective of the broad topic of help's usefulness, I am seeing support for the stale job as an incremental improvement.

In the coming days/weeks I will:

• explore replicating the careful and successful approach of stale build: last test of the stale feature action node#42085
• explore welcome-new-users action (reactive) vs an issue template improvement (proactive)