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by Aethylia
1626 days ago
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It isn't more work for the maintainer to _not_ close issues purely based on time. This argument has been repeated often. And with the prevalence of lazily-used stale bots, it's not feasible for anyone to make all the forks necessary. Discussion can eventually lead to a shift, repeating this argument can't. |
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This overlooks the emotional burden of having a large, unbounded backlog.
When I see that I have a missed call, I feel an obligation to call that person back. When I see that I have a text, or a DM, or an email, I feel an obligation to respond. Individually these are all minor obligations, but in aggregate they eventually coalesce into anxiety. PRs, too, get thrown onto this pile.
Burnout is a self-imposed "boiling the frog slowly" scenario caused by gradually taking on more responsibility than you can successfully deal with. Realistic ways to prevent burnout are by either aggressively preventing new obligations from being thrown onto the pile, or by periodically defaulting on obligations and resetting the pile entirely. It appears to me that the stale bot is an instance of the latter. An instance of the former would be to just outright forbid PRs entirely.
And if anyone thinks that they have the mental fortitude to handle an ever-growing and unbounded pile of obligations, then that only reiterates the call for them to fork these projects and accept the burden personally.