Detox: Our Policy on Issues

[LeoNatan]

This issue is closed, but is unlocked for discussion. Feel free to speak your mind.

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The issue templates are there for a reason; please follow them and provide all the requested information! Note that any issue not following the appropriate issue template or missing information will be closed.

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Bots in this repository

Someone commented about the stale bot, so I would like to take this opportunity to discuss a little why we have these bots set up they way they are.

We have integrated this repository with 4 bots:

• Support—we use this bot to close general support issues and point the original user to Stack Overflow and the detox tag there
• No Response—we use this bot to close issues where more information is required but the original user did not provide in a reasonable time
• Stale—we use this bot to lock old and inactive issues and pull requests
• Lock—we use this bot to lock closed issues and pull requests, after a certain period of time of inactivity

Let's discuss the rational for each bot's integration and how it is configured and used in the repo.

A while ago, we decided that usage/support questions should be posted in the issue tracker; the issue tracker is to be used for actual Detox issues or enhancement requests. Stack Overflow is a widely known and very public Q&A site, so we decided that is the most suitable place for these questions to be, so that they get the widest visibility and possibly prevent duplication of similar questions.

As the project became popular, we noticed a large influx of issue reporting, many of which did not provide any useful information for us to debug. Even after we added the issue template, people would ignore it and not provide all the necessary information. In order to prevent these issues taking mental load on our part, having to ask again and again for this information, we integrated the No Response bot. Once a certain label is set, the bot monitors for a response from the original user. If this response is not provided in time, the issue is closed.

I guess the most controversial bots we use are the last two.

The Stale bot is used to close old, inactive issues. The reason we decided to enable this is so that we can encourage our users to test their issues on the latest Detox releases. We saw a large number of issues would remain open for 6+ months, a lot of them actually fixed or irrelevant, but the original user is not there to update their issue. With the bot, we encourage our users to test on the latest version, and ping us to let us know the issue is still relevant. For pull requests, this is even more important, as stale pull requests are very hard to maintain by our contributors. We have labels that disable this behavior, so for enhancement requests, discussions and pinned issues will remain open. When an issue is closed, we actually prefer a new issue be opened, rather than bumping and reopening a new issue. Since a long time has passed, the new issue will ensure the latest version of Detox is tested, and the latest log format, etc. is provided so we can debug more thoroughly. Which leads to the last bot.

After a certain period of inactivity following the closing of an issue or a pull request, the Lock bot locks the thread for discussion. What we experienced before integrating this bot was an issue that was closed (for us this means the issue is solved), and then a sudden flood of comments would happen on old issues, often unrelated to the original problem. We prefer these new discussions happen in a new issue, so that we can monitor them more effectively.

No system is perfect, and sometimes things fall between the cracks. We are a small team and have limited capacity. Members of the Detox team also have other projects they are working on. We do our best to go over issues and pull requests and tag them as accurately as possible, and provide a solution as fast as possible. For enhancement requests, we consider not just the requested feature but also the broader implications such a feature might have. Since this is a small, opinionated team, there are times which we block features if we believe they might cause users to misuse Detox.

In any case, always feel free to open a new issue if a previous one was closed. If the previous issue has a definitive answer why it was closed, most likely that the new issue will also be closed.

Thanks

[JanithaR]

I don't see the point of having the option to select 'I need help with Detox' when creating an issue.
https://imgur.com/a/abTlKjX

If you guys are too busy or out of manpower then don't let people create issues that belong to this category at all just to have that tagged and closed by a bot. It creates unnecessary confusion and misunderstanding.

[LeoNatan]

That button is my devious plot to deter people from openening fake "issues". Help requests should not be open here. It's effective: https://github.com/wix/Detox/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed+label%3A%22type%3A+question%2Fstack+overflow%22

Before we had this template, people would open "bugs" and ask how to do things, at which point we'd put the label and have the bot close it.

Since the bot explains exactly why it's closing the issue, I don't see why it's confusing. I also added a link to this discussion recently.

[JanithaR]

The confusion comes from letting the issue be open for commenting I guess. If it's an 'I Need Help with Detox' question then just close it and lock it then and there.

[LeoNatan]

Before the current templates, we had the normal template which would tell people not to ask usage questions: https://github.com/wix/Detox/blob/master/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md
Of course, they'd just ignore it and ask anyway.

The current method is effective.

[vvscode]

Effective? How do you measure it? It's not really pleasant when you follow instructions (choose correct template), and your issue is immediately closed