Understanding and Enhancing Issue Prioritization in GitHub

GitHub has become a prominent platform for open source software development, facilitating collaboration and communication among a diverse group of contributors. Efficient issue tracking is a crucial aspect of managing projects on GitHub, and labels serve as one of the primary mechanisms for issue prioritization, while various other issue features are also utilized by issue handlers for the same purpose. However, in large projects, prioritizing issues remains a challenge, and the efficacy of using labels or other issue features for prioritization is not well understood. To address this knowledge gap, we conduct a comprehensive empirical study that investigates the role of labels in GitHub issue prioritization, examines the influence of various issue features on prioritization, and assesses the performance of different ranking algorithms based on these impactful features. Our study, conducted on a dataset comprising data from over 1.5 million issues across diverse GitHub projects, provides valuable insights for issue handling in open source platforms and offers guidance for future research in this domain. Specifically, the study reveals the limited effectiveness of labels in issue prioritization, highlights the significance of certain issue features in the prioritization process, and compares the performance of various ranking algorithms for issue prioritization to support issue handlers.