All, We do from time to time go through the backlog of PR's that need to be reviewed and start a "cleansing" process, closing out any old PR's that appear to have stalled out. When we do this, though, we typically will start sending out e-mails asking if there are any stalled PR's that we shouldn't close and start trying to decipher which ones are okay to close out and which ones are not. This puts quite an onus on the committer who is trying to clean this up. It also can result in having a large number of outstanding Pull Requests, which I believe makes the community look bad because it gives the appearance that we are not doing a good job of being responsive to Pull Requests that are submitted.
I would like to propose that we set a new "standard" that is: if we have any Pull Request that has been stalled (and by "stalled" I mean a committer has reviewed the PR and did not merge but asked for clarifications or modifications and the contributor has not pushed any new commit or responded to the comments) for at least 30 days, that we go ahead and close the Pull Request (after commenting on the PR that it is being closed due to a lack of activity and that the contributor is more than welcome to open a new PR if necessary). I feel like this gives contributors enough time to address concerns and it is simple enough to create a new Pull Request if the need arises. Alternatively, if the contributor realizes that they need more time, they can simply comment on the PR that they are still interested in working on it but just need more time, and the simple act of commenting will mean that the PR is no longer stalled, as defined above. Any thoughts on such a proposal? Any better alternatives that people have in mind? Thanks -Mark
