Problem/Motivation

  • We do not currently provide much guidance for when it is appropriate to take an issue assigned to someone else.
  • Assigned issues may stagnate if the "owner" does not work on them.
  • On the other hand, "taking" an issue assigned to someone else can lead to duplicated effort and feelings of frustration or disappointment, especially for novices working on their first contributions.

Proposed resolution

    • Automatically unassign issues after 30 days with no activity by the assignee.
    • Automatically add a comment something like:

      There hasn't been activity on this issue in 30 days. If you're still interested in taking it, please reassign. If not, anyone else is welcome to try!

    • Document that, before 30 days have elapsed, it is generally considered polite to:
      • Ask a user before "taking" his or her issue.
      • Give the user a minimum of 24 hours to respond before "taking" the issue.
    • Document that this etiquette does not apply in cases of majors, criticals, or blockers for other issues. (The priority is to resolve the issue as soon as possible.)

Comments

chx’s picture

chx CreditAttribution: chx commented

no activity by the assigned, you mean. Reviews don't count.

xjm’s picture

xjm
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Issue summary: View changes

Updated issue summary.

xjm’s picture

xjm
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Issue summary: View changes

Updated issue summary.

xjm’s picture

xjm
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clarification

xjm’s picture

xjm
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Updated summary based on several points of feedback from IRC.

xjm’s picture

xjm
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So, for legitimately long-term, complicated issues assigned to active contributors, this would mean a once-a-month annoyance per issue. I checked trackers for a couple major contributors. sun has 2 pages of assigned issues, the first of which is more than a month old; davereid has 6 pages, five of which are more than a month old.

It would also be wise to exempt maintainers from this. That would reduce davereid's count significantly, and prevent Dries' issues from slipping away.

xjm’s picture

xjm
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Here's a more complicated, maybe crazy thought: A profile field whereby you exempt yourself from issues being automatically unassigned? That way the suns and davereids would simply not be affected by this, but the rest would be effective.

xjm’s picture

xjm
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Also, if we decide Proposed Resolution point 1 is a bad idea, I'd still like to see Proposed Resolution point 2. This comes up a lot when mentoring novices.

xjm’s picture

xjm
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So I just went through the novice queue looking at assigned issues with no activity in 4 weeks or more, posting the following comment when appropriate:

Hi @assignee_name,

Thanks for taking this on. Are you still working on this issue? If not, we'll unassign it in a day or two so that someone else can give it a try. (Feel free to assign it back to yourself if you'd still like to work on it, as well.) Thanks!

And actually, it turned out only 11 issues were assigned to people who hadn't worked on them. (About as many assigned issues were still waiting on review of some sort.) So maybe the stagnation part of it isn't as big of a deal as I thought.

xjm’s picture

xjm
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sun pointed out that if we were to take this route, we should provide an alternate way for people to track "their" issues in the long-term (that's more specific than just a follow).

xjm’s picture

xjm
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Issue summary: View changes

Updated issue summary.

lizzjoy’s picture

lizzjoy
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Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

Hi @xjm, I am closing this issue due to inactivity. Please open it again anytime you are ready. Thanks.

xjm’s picture

xjm
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Status: Closed (won't fix) » Active

The feature request still stands.

YesCT’s picture

YesCT CreditAttribution: YesCT commented
Project: Drupal.org site moderators » Drupal.org customizations
Version: » 7.x-3.x-dev
Component: Other » Code

In #2020789-1: Automatically unassign issues from people if there has been no activity in 2 weeks, @Mixologic moved a similar issue to customizations, so doing that here.

Also, that issue and #2408465: Automatic unassign "Assigned to" in issues closed as duplicates in favor of this older issue.

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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I think this would be a great addition.

I've unassigned a bunch of folks from a variety of issues in the past. Not always using the correct process, but I noticed that issues weren't being taken on if they were already assigned.

Improperly assigned issues really are a barrier for people getting involved in open issues.

joelpittet’s picture

joelpittet
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Location Vancouver
CreditAttribution: joelpittet as a volunteer commented

+1 to this issue.

dawehner’s picture

dawehner
Primary language German
CreditAttribution: dawehner as a volunteer commented

I'd just love that

dscl’s picture

dscl CreditAttribution: dscl as a volunteer and at Trellon, LLC, DevBrains commented

+1 from me.

We had a sprint last Sunday and although I kept reminding people to unassign whatever they assign, I still had to unassign some manually later. It was a small event, but we (community) surely have some "garbage to collect" on this matter from other/previous events.
Not sure how it would work, but I could volunteer some time on discussing and implementing this if people agree to have it. :)