Every now and then there’s an issue that might have merit, but in the current state isn’t clear/actionable. Either it’s a potential valid improvement or there is a chance there is an underlying bug, but the information state so far isn’t enough to be sure. Those bugs are annoying when going through old bugs (for cleanup and to refresh the memory on “valid” outstanding problems), I’d really like to have an option to filter them out. Therefore I propose to add a “waiting-for-info” or “needs-clarification” or whatever issue label, that is added when we ask the issue-reporter for additional info. Then I can filter on that label and we might even let the bot close those issues after 90 days saying something like “info missing, reopen when you provide them”. I believe this is better than outright closing, as it creates less emotionality and also prevents close-open cycles if the reporter responds with the requested info (and at least for me, asking for info and delayed closing is not a real option, I’ll forget). Some candidates/examples:
Labels are free, so why not.
FWIW, in my mind, this has so far been indicated by the absence of a bug/enhancement label. But we could of course have issues that are clearly a bug, yet need more info…
I just tagged a few issues, which definitely didn’t need more info (mostly enhancements) and e.g. the latest example above has the enhancement tag (added by the reporter). Putting meaning on a default state feels dangerous, because at least I am probably just as likely to simply forget to tag appropriately.
Looks like the concept is generally met favorably. Any comments on the naming? Otherwise I will go ahead using “waiting-for-info” the next time I encounter the need.
I just opened a PR to improve our issue templates. As part of that the user gets to choose “feature” or “bug” and they get different templates. We could also automatically apply labels at that stage. We could for example add the bug / enhancement plus a needs-triage label – the latter meaning that the actual bug/enhancement-ness is yet to be determined… It would be essentially the opposite of waiting-for-info. Our action would be to remove that label to indicate that the issue is triaged / validated, or close the issue if not…
To the extent that labels mean anything, I think this sort of improves the user experience as they get some sort of indicator on what is the state of the issue, and an expectation on what needs to happen next.
I guess I’d still be more in favor of people landing in the forum, but I guess we now have a needs triage flag which is able to filter out stuff that might need closing.
Well there is an even stronger push towards the forum now as well.
Sounds good to me. Seeing the PR I was wondering whether the forum option would be better at the top (was too late). However lets see how it goes with the current setup, I hope it’s already going to be a bit better 
I don’t think we get that choice, or I would have made it like that. GitHub organizes first the templates, then the security policy if any, then the “contact links”.