Don't forget all major OSS repositories using a stale bot to close any issue regardless of how many people reported it or how serious it is. Close and lock at times. Yikes.
The stale bot approach does help in cases where a bug does not have merit. For example, not that long ago, a user opened a bug asking us to rename the ZFS Event Daemon so a text editor could adopt the daemon’s name. The consensus among contributors on the discussion is that we will not do it, but no one has volunteered to be the one to close the bug. The stale bot will be closing that one for us.
If the user never responded to further questions, then absolutely.
What I see however is that maintainers themselves fight the bot removing the label and reopening issues. Over and over. Until they miss the notification.
That doesn't sound like an even remotely ideal way to handle that. Don't just needlessly string the original reporter along until some arbitrary time limit expires.
Yes it still is. I made a reproducible example, try it out.