Closing issues

[skot]

Nobody likes having their issue abruptly closed. On the other hand this project gets a lot of duplicate, off-topic, and even spam issues posted. We're all volunteers and don't have a lot of extra time.

How should this be handled?

[benjamin-wilson]

I agree the repo has way too many off topic 'issues' to keep up with. Firstly blank issue can be removed, this forces the user into at least reading the issue text. The first few lines should probably describe that is and is not an acceptable issue to open.

https://docs.github.com/en/communities/using-templates-to-encourage-useful-issues-and-pull-requests/configuring-issue-templates-for-your-repository#configuring-the-template-chooser

Unfortunately beyond that the only moderator options are limiting users which makes new contribution difficult, I experienced this difficulty first hand when trying to open an issue for mempool.space and adding public-pool to the known pool ist

[benjamin-wilson]

It's too bad there is not a way to limit it to users who have contributed to other repos in some way, this would disable a lot of the non-technical spam and questions

[WantClue]

I agree the repo has way too many off topic 'issues' to keep up with. Firstly blank issue can be removed, this forces the user into at least reading the issue text. The first few lines should probably describe that is and is not an acceptable issue to open.

https://docs.github.com/en/communities/using-templates-to-encourage-useful-issues-and-pull-requests/configuring-issue-templates-for-your-repository#configuring-the-template-chooser

Unfortunately beyond that the only moderator options are limiting users which makes new contribution difficult, I experienced this difficulty first hand when trying to open an issue for mempool.space and adding public-pool to the known pool ist

This would probably enhance the quality of issues that we do receive. The blank issue removal is a good approach IMO.

[etkaar]

The key is communication. If the opened issue is just a question and not related a bug, then the user shall be redirected to a different channel (e.g. the Q&A category of Discussions here in the repository). These channels should then be advertised on the README page so that people have it on first sight.

Removing the Blank issue template (even if people could still abuse the Bug report template) sounds appropriate, because right now it is an invitation and it is a good idea using the issues primarily for bug reports/development.