Pau
✧✦Catherine✦✧monthly routine ^_^
Sammy Arson Fox :3@whitequark hell yeah
Kevin Karhan@whitequark Consider making an #UnstaleBot that solely exists to kick in everytime #StaleBot is being used on an issue.
- Also StaleBot - like #StarBot - should be outlawed!
Tobias@whitequark How bleak.
Thank you for your service.
Thank you for your service.
2nko
Sebastian Cohnen@whitequark while I can personally understand the urge to "clean stuff up”, I wholeheartedly agree that these stale bots are just the worst.
@tisba being rude while saying "a friendly reminder" is really the thing that makes it insulting
@whitequark absolutely! Especially if it's fully automated. I can understand when from time to time somebody looks through old issues and tries to triage if the issue is still valid, or asking for some new information etc.
@tisba yeah manual triage is 100% fair game
@tisba even siccing copilot on the issue would have been less insulting than a flat 30 day timeout ffs
@whitequark 30 days is extra insulting, if you ask me.
Gwen the Loitering Fox 
@whitequark @tisba what I hate the most is that this is a reminder to whoever created the issue that "we haven't done anything about it in 30 days"
stale bots should be used to remind maintainers, not users, to keep up activity. Ideally a stalebot message should be:
Matthias Mair@gwenthefops @tisba @whitequark that depends on your view of what is “owed” ppl that use software that was published for free.
I noticed the last few years that more and more users seem to just snipe 3 half baked ideas into feature requests and fck off to never be seen again or answer any questions. If an issue has no one assigned to be responsible and no movement the bot closes it after 30 days. Anyone mad about it can get them self assigned
@matmair @tisba @whitequark if it is a feature request, especially half baked, then all it takes is a single maintainer to go "we're not gonna work on that" with an optional "but you're welcome to submit something"
And in that case, instead of auto-closing, the maintainer is reminded that they gave time for the user to do something about it, thye didn't, just close.
Tiny bit more work (that I as a maintainer of an open source project would gladly do, if our project had a stalebot) for a much better feeling for the user
And in that case, instead of auto-closing, the maintainer is reminded that they gave time for the user to do something about it, thye didn't, just close.
Tiny bit more work (that I as a maintainer of an open source project would gladly do, if our project had a stalebot) for a much better feeling for the user
@whitequark @gwenthefops @tisba that seems like a very unkind thing to say without knowing anything about me.
But matches with the stuff others have started asserting about me from 1 sentence here. I see non-conformance is not wanted in your follower ship.
@matmair @gwenthefops @tisba open source is a collaborative enterprise. if you don't respect my time why should i respect yours? and if you insult me, why should i tolerate that?
@whitequark @gwenthefops @tisba I really do not see how a stale bot is an insult.
The example posted is an unfortunate case; at most after the second message / reaction cycle someone should deactivate the bot for that issue.
The cases that I try to solve are like this one: https://github.com/inventree/InvenTree/issues/9998 there is a question back and then just silence from OP. I spend 20-30 hrs a week co-maintaining that project for 5 years now.
@whitequark @gwenthefops @tisba we have tried to onboard ppl to help triage; no one seems to want to help. At one point we had over 200 issues that were awaiting feedback; it was not possible to determine which bug was real and which was a deployment problem/already solved.
If you have soltutions that are better I am all ears. Going through alle issues every few weeks and nagging for feedback took hours and was deeply demoralizing.
2/2
@matmair @gwenthefops @tisba this is not an "unfortunate case", this is how the stale bot is normally deployed. and if you don't see how auto-closing an issue I could have spent hours or days debugging is an insult and a gravely disrespectful way to treat my time I don't think we have much to discuss
Billy O'Neal@whitequark @tisba Agreed. Any system calling *itself* friendly is almost always not.
Jernej Simončič �@whitequark If you write a bot, please make it public :)
RoseForge 
@whitequark slay queen 💅
Omnivorewhitequark added kind/bug on Dec 23, 2025
dosubot added Buildah on Dec 23, 2025
github-actions bot on jan 23-with GitHub Actions
A friendly reminder that this issue had no activity for 30 days.
github-actions added (stale-issue
on Jan 23
whitequark on jan 23
A friendly reminder that stale bots are an insult to contributors.
Author
github-actions removed stale-issue on Jan 24
nalind removed Buildah on Feb 5
github-actions bot on Mar 8-with GitHub Actions
A friendly reminder that this issue had no activity for 30 days.
github-actions added (stale-issue on Mar 8
whitequark on Mar 8
(Author)...
A friendly reminder that stale bots are an insult to contributors.
github-actions removed stale-issue on Mar 10
github-actions (bot 12 hours ago - with GitHub Actions
A friendly reminder that this issue had no activity for 30 days.
github-actions added stale-issue 12 hours ago
whitequark now
A friendly reminder that stale bots are an insult to contributors.
(I think I'll write a bot to do this for me next time...)
Author
@Ralph added, thanks
desea@Ralph @whitequark why not add an alttext that describes whats happening once instead of a very long word by word description?
And what would recommend that abridged description be? I was afraid of missing some nuance and misinterpreting the scenario through my bias.
Hunter Perrin@whitequark I switched to Forgejo, and I love it! It’s a bit tedious to set up everything the right way, took me about two hours, but once done, it’s awesome!
@hperrin yeah I love it
@whitequark when u adding a cronjob for this
luca@whitequark There are a few subjects that you can't educate, one is stupidly programmed machines. They are automatic annoying machines.
Then there are bureacrats, but if you multiply your effort to be their annoyance they may desist.
Then there are bureacrats, but if you multiply your effort to be their annoyance they may desist.
Kirtai 🏳️⚧️@whitequark
"Friendly"...
"Friendly"...
Cedric Rossi@whitequark not all heroes wear capes !
@whitequark I feel so conflicted about this. On the one hand I agree with you the situation sucks. On the other hand we have deployed this because we get tends of thousands of meaningless garbage issue reports and we can barely keep up with incoming PR submissions, much less issue submissions.
I guess maybe there's an argument that we shouldn't have issue tracking turned on at all if we can't meaningfully look at them but they're occasionally useful for coordinating something that happens across several PRs.
@malwareminigun can you set ACLs so that only project members can file issues?
@malwareminigun but also you're at Microsoft right? I think a lot of big companies have an open source strategy that allocates 0 funding to working with the community
@malwareminigun and this is in itself not necessarily a problem—in fact I have an idea for tackling this that I'll try to write about in a few days—but it needs to be communicated well
@whitequark I mean, I am the funding of working with the community. I can't speak for the company as a whole (particularly recently) :/ .
@malwareminigun here's how i'm thinking about it
let's say my literal actual job is to maintain some project. if i am to keep up with the community engagement, i need to at least split "my job description" vs "community efforts" as 50/50, but sometimes it's closer to 25/75
and i don't think microsoft, or really anybody else, considers does that
@malwareminigun this is the situation i was in with Amaranth and it generated a pretty big amount of friction with the management (and is a big part of why i eventually left and got an NLnet grant to continue doing so)
though unlike that startup, Microsoft has functionally infinite cash
@whitequark At the moment my job description is about 70% keep the community from collapsing 30% prevent us from getting sued into oblivion.
RE: Infinite cash: You and I are together in screaming at the company to fund things; as it is vcpkg is down to effectively 2 heads.
@malwareminigun yeah! this is so completely nonsensical. NVIDIA's Linux graphics division is I think like one guy? everybody really hates the guy but I don't, it's an unenviable job and every time I would post a sketchy patch on my blog or their forums they'll figure out how to integrate it properly (even if the patch was originally literally "modify these bytes in nvidia.ko")
@malwareminigun i have no doubt NVIDIA could afford to pay hundreds of people to work on Linux graphics if they wanted with barely a dent in their bottom line. they just... don't
@whitequark Doesn't look like it. The only options I see in here are "enable/disable issues" and "enable/disable closing issues based on keywords in PRs/commit messages".
@malwareminigun right yeah so... that's on github. I think I would not be upset if I encountered auto-closing issues instantly with a message that boils down to "we simply do not have resources to deal with this" (this is better than just letting it to rot); it's really the uncertainty and repeated make-work that's a problem in the original case
Jes - Hedgehog Edition @whitequark freshbot
Alexandre Franke@whitequark I like to reply with either just the word “activity” or a cartwheel emoji, further showing the ridicule of the situation.
altf4@whitequark Oh yes. I feel the pain