I thoroughly agree. Remember, these are just rows in a database, they are not Bird Flu cases. Closing old threads is not changing anything, it is just fudging the data so that your report (ie. the queue) looks nicer. So, I'm not sure how this coversation started, but I sure hope this is how it ends. Bèr Kessels wrote:
A bug is a bug, untill it is squashed. The fact that no-one looked at an issue for a while, nor the fact that few people seem to encounter the bug changes that fact! A feature request remains a valid request untill the feature is either introdiuced, or solved in a similar way, or else proven to be inapropriate. "being very long in a queue" has nothing to do with fixing a feature request.
Closing bugs, or feature requests because our searching and organising methods suck is not a solution to the real problem!
If we are swamped in bug reports that means we either have a system that is severely broken (more bugs come in then get fixed), or that we lack the infrastructure to keep the bug reports up to date. I am certain it is the latter :)
Project module is being actively maintained again. So lets focus on a real solution. Not on some half-witted "abuse issue states because we cannot mange the issues right now" solution".
We might need alternative States, or else additional metadata to enhance maintainability. But "closed" is a state! It tells us that an issue is closed (doh). "has been open for too long" could be a flag on an issue, it might even lead to closing at some point (the issue is for 80% fixed in Drupal 4.7, please update your 3.2 version to 4.7) but is never the same as "closed".
Bèr