I keep hoping it will simply gain a way to say 'I still care, this is still an issue, there's no new information to add, (nor asked for!) it's just not being prioritised so please leave it open'. Or infer that after a couple of stale removals.

Sure they close a lot of junk from drive-by question askers which helps maintainers, but they piss off a lot of good citizens providing information on actual bugs/feature requests that are just waiting for attention too.