GitHub issues are flawed:

It feels like there are only 3 options:

Be super-human
(spend all your waking hours helping people for free)

Be a jerk
(liberally close issues without good explanations)

Be a slob
(Let the issues grow wild like an uncut front lawn)

This could be fixed with ONE missing feature:

Allow and ENCOURAGE the public to re-open closed issues.

I know, it's counter-intuitive, but here's why:

As the maintainer, when I close an issue that hasn't been fully resolved, I feel a tinge of "user suppression".

Like I'm silencing the voices of the people.

Here's a quick exercise to understand why I feel this way:

Think of a time you were using a tool and hit an obscure error. It's slowing your work down. You're frustrated.

You google the error and hope stack overflow has an answer.

It doesn't. Instead, you end up in a GitHub issue thread.

You read the opening description. It sounds exactly like the thing you're experiencing. You are full of both hope and fear as you scroll.

Lots of others are chiming in with "+1"s - This is encouraging

Then at some point a maintainer closes it without comment...

or with some formal/filler comment saying something like "due to inactivity" or "hard to reproduce" or something

It's disheartening...

(these are comments I write all the time btw)

Then following the "closed" status, there's more people pleading to the maintainers to re-open.

Now there's frustration/disappointment because they know their cries won't be heard.

They've been silenced.

The issue has been closed and there's nothing anyone can do about it...

Ok, did you feel something? Can you empathize with that experience?

Now here's that story from the maintainers perspective:

Someone creates an issue and pastes in an error message.

IF there are steps to reproduce, they are vague and require you to have the person's entire set up running locally.

It takes SOOOOO much effort and context switching to evaluate and even just confirm there is an issue...

More people chime in with "+1" which doesn't make your life any easier, just almost feels like crowd of people yelling at you to do work for them for free.

THIS IS OPEN SOURCE.... DO IT YOURSELF!

...cries a fatigued voice in your head...

Now, months later you are declaring war on the issues tab so that your project doesn't feel like a sloppy mess.

You get to this issue. No one's added anything constructive.

You close it, the burden disappears. You feel such relief...

Ok, how about that? Did you feel empathy for the maintainer's experience?

Both parties are well meaning, but the platform for them to interact isn't optimized for their needs.

It causes tension and frustration.

The public wants a thing fixed.

The maintainers wants to know:
- is this a real issue?
- how many people experience this? (priority)

Here's why my proposal fixes this dynamic.

If I can close issues with a kind, stock message like:

"I'm closing this to keep the number of open issues manageable (the honest reason). PLEASE feel free to re-open at any time."

Now, here's the result of that:

I can close issues liberally and not feel like I'm a jerk or I'm making a permanent decision.

The public can re-open guilt free, so they don't feel suppressed.

Because of the new dynamic. I can keep the issues tab low and things that are ACTUALLY problems and in demand will pop back up naturally.

It's like auto-prioritizing.

I can also "lock" an issue if this freedom is abused.

I'm struggling so hard with the options I feel I'm given with the current set up.

This would make everyone's lives better in my repos.

What do you think @github?

My repos:
https://github.com/livewire/livewire https://github.com/alpinejs/alpine