Lots of projects on GitHub (not sure about lodash) automatically lock closed issues so you can't comment on it anymore. That closes an avenue for those that are impacted by the issue to discuss fixes, workarounds and alternatives.

But they should be looked at. They aren't because we don't have infinite time every day to look at issues.

If those issues are still a problem nobody will find them, they'll make new issues and lose all the previous history, unless the UI is designed to support automatically suggesting reopening an old issue instead.

It's not necessarily true that they 'should' be looked at. Most old projects that follow the 'never close without verification' philosophy end up, eventually, with a majority of open issues not actually reflecting the current state of the project.

A middle-ground might be to leave open the issues with recent activity, with the idea being that at least the ones that are affecting people the most are not swept under the rug.

> Most old projects that follow the 'never close without verification' philosophy end up, eventually, with a majority of open issues not actually reflecting the current state of the project.

There's a crucial question here that I find not enough people ask themselves: does that actually matter? And if yes, why? What, specifically, is the material problem caused by this situation?

It often feels like people are just chasing 'inbox zero', under the assumption that "0 open issues == good", without any actual material problem being solved in the process.

(Github probably isn't helping here, with their undeservedly prominent placement of the open issue count driving this sort of behaviour...)

An easy step towards a solution would be for GH to mandate a version number field and allow repo owners to close wildly outdated issues and PRs en masse (like if they just released 3.0, closing all 1.x might be entirely reasonable, and might as well be easy).

Closed implies that a decision has been made that the issue is somehow not worthy of consideration anymore. That’s what bugs me as a user.

Whether any given ticket is being looked at can change over time. Closing it is a way to drastically reduce the likelihood that it is being looked at. As a user, I see no good reason why that should be done, in particular when it is applied across the board without considering the individual issue.

Closing means it's not worth of consideration at this time, it can always be reopened.

As a user you obviously see no good reason for that. As maintainers having more bugs open than will ever be worked on (e.g. because no one will put up the legwork), serves no good purpose.

PS: individually considering each of 100s of issues takes time and mind share, that can better be invested elsewhere.

Closed does mean resolved. One way or another. If it's not resolved, it's still open. If the ticket was improperly marked closed, that just means someone else has to create a new ticket for the unresolved issue.