After some chat on Slack, I wanted to have a poll here on the idea of closing 
“old” tickets, for various definitions of old. The Slack conversation was in 
favor, but as that is a small subset of the entire project, I’m hoping to get a 
broader consensus here. There are several questions:


1) Do you want to auto-close tickets that are filed against 2.0? (Data: There’s 
only 19 of them. The newest of these is from 2009. 
https://httpd.rcbowen.com/httpd-20x-open-bugs.html)

[ ] Yes, close 2.0 tickets
[ ] No, don’t

2) Do you want to auto-close tickets that are files against 2.2? (Data: There’s 
59 of them. The newest is from 2014. 
https://httpd.rcbowen.com/httpd-22x-open-bugs.html)

[ ] Yes, close 2.2 tickets
[ ] No, don’t.

3) Do you want to auto-close tickets that are marked NEEDINFO but have received 
no response in a long time? (Data: There’s 89 tickets which are NEEDINFO and 
have been unanswered for 90+ days, and obviously this number changes depending 
on what timeframe you pick. https://httpd.rcbowen.com/httpd-needinfo-stale.html)

[ ] Yes, close NEEDINFO after 90 days
[ ] Yes, close NEEDINFO after a while, but a different length of time
[ ] NO, don’t.

4) Do you want to auto-close tickets that have been open with no discussion for 
ages? (Data: Varies depending on what you consider old, but 69% of tickets 
haven’t been touched in more than 5 years. 
https://httpd.rcbowen.com/httpd-needinfo-stale.html)

[ ] Close tickets that have been abandoned for 10 years
[ ] … 5 years
[ ] … 2 years
[ ] Some other time period
[ ] Don’t ever auto-close anything.


In each case, a close message would encourage the reporter to reopen, or open a 
new ticket, against a current release, if the problem still exists.

The goal here is to make our ticket backlog less daunting, and more appealing 
to contributors who want to pick meaningful stuff to work on.


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