Issue Triaging > Standardised Labels

[mefellows]

• Agree on a standard set of labels and descriptions
• Automate the standard across the estate
• Setup issue commenting/actions - when an issue is labelled, a github action updates the issue with a comment explaining the next steps
• Setup stale bot - labels applied to a ticket that require an action to progress it may become stale. If they become stale and aren't updated, consider automatically closing them

[mefellows]

On the stale action. I propose the following:

1. If the issue is triaged and is assigned the label awaiting feedback (from OP), the requester has X weeks in which to respond
2. If no activity occurs for X weeks and the awaiting feedback label is applied, then the issue will be marked as stale, with a comment indicating the issue will be closed automatically after Y weeks
3. Commenting and other activity on an issue whilst it's marked as awaiting feedback pauses this timer.
4. If the awaiting feedback label is removed, stale bot ignores the issue

I propose the values for X and Y:

X - 2 weeks
Y - 2 weeks

The purpose of stale bot is to ensure issue that haven't been fully vetted are not clogging up the system with noise, and to encourage the OP to take ownership of the issue until it has been accepted onto a backlog or rejected (e.g. not a bug or incompatible with the goals of the project)