GitHub stale bot considered harmful

The GitHub stale bot, which automatically closes issues after 60 days of inactivity, is argued to be harmful to open source projects. Rather than treating issues as personal action items, maintainers should view them as community collaboration spaces where users can accumulate details, workarounds, and plans for eventual fixes. Having many open issues signals popularity, not failure. An alternative workflow using mailing lists (as on SourceHut) is proposed to improve bug report quality before tickets are filed, without implying any commitment to a fix timeline.