[Dlang-internal] The Phantom Zone

[Martin Nowak]

On Monday, 15 January 2018 at 01:10:58 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> But github has a feature we can use for this. We tag these PRs 
> with "Phantom Zone" and then close them.
>
> http://superman.wikia.com/wiki/The_Phantom_Zone
> (People with terminal diseases would get put in the Phantom 
> Zone until a cure could be found.)
>
> They can then be viewed via this link:
>
> https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed+label%3A%15Phantom+Zone%15
>
> PRs banished to the Phantom Zone would have to have an 
> explanatory comment saying why.
>
> Andrei has suggested calling it "Limbo".

What other projects are occasionally doing is a mass exodus of 
all (stale) PRs. Asking people (via comment) to create new ones 
(hurdle) if they still care enough.
I've seen this many times, sometimes because repos are migrated 
(good reason), sometimes just because it's too many.

I'd suggest that someone plans a friendly spring-cleaning with a 
helpful message. It won't be very disturbing IMO.
Making sure to get all the right stalled PRs is another task. 
Maybe just take everything > 12 month or so. Some research into 
PR stats would be helpful, e.g. likelihood of merge after X days, 
to inform a good value.

Tagging closed PRs as phantom zone is a good idea.
Let's just no do it continuously, but as properly communicated 
mass cleaning.

Overall this sounds like a couple of bash lines, candidate for 
https://github.com/MartinNowak/github_scripts.