Probot-stale half of the open issues are marked to be closed

[lucfranken]

I noticed that about half of all open issues are marked by a bot:
https://github.com/apollographql/apollo-client/labels/no-recent-activity

While reviewing that list many of the items seem to be totally valid issues which are (partly) unanswered. The expectation from people who posted the issues is not clear to me. Do we need to kick them to stay open and alive? Feels a bit the way around.

Example:
#1759 (comment)

Maybe find a more subtle way because at least some of them are waiting for response from the Apollo team instead of the issue creator?

[ctavan]

Another example: #621 (comment)

[jbaxleyiii]

@lucfranken @ctavan I'm sorry that this has been frustrating for you! I setup the bot to help me triage issues and to actually help me make sure that I (nor the original opener) forget about them.

Currently the number of people / contributors handling issues on the client and react integration (the two highest used) is just 1 (me). The bots are intended to help me stay on track of everything! If you are interested in helping to triage / open failing tests / write PR's that would be so wonderful and I would be happy to help out!

If there is a better way that we can communicate with the bots, I'd love to improve it!

[lucfranken]

@jbaxleyiii thanks for the reply! Ah, that sounds like a lot of work! Understand you use tools for it. Maybe the message could be tweaked a bit to make your intentions more clear!

Some input on from the team is needed on the intended direction/vision, see for example: #1697 (comment) When the intended direction is clear mor help might be possible.

[lucfranken]

@jbaxleyiii to be clear, here it now happened that issues are just closed:

#899 (comment)

Are you sure that bot isn't going to close down those relevant issues?

[jbaxleyiii]

@lucfranken sadly it will probably end up closing some relevant issues. The bot takes 5 weeks to close an issue (first comment is three weeks after no activity and close is two weeks after that). If the community / myself hasn't noticed it / responded over 5 weeks I don't see how it will be found and fixed 😢.

What we really need is more help with issues in the client. Unfortunately I don't have the time to manage all issues of the primary repos and continue to push things forward. We are working to scale up our team but the biggest impact would be more community help.

I am truly sorry this is the case right now. I am working as hard as I can to improve this process but would love if you have any other ideas! For issues you are tracking, you can always ping me on GitHub with a mention, open a failing test, or reach out on slack!

[lucfranken]

@jbaxleyiii like I said: There needs to be some vision input from the team on those issues. It's totally unclear what the direction of the API is which makes it impossible to add specific tests / advices etc.