"waiting for further input (e.g. from its reporter or a third party) and can currently not be acted on," and "waiting for something to happen before we can progress' " seems to be the same thing to me.

NEEDS_INFO is actually less clear to me because a ticket always needs some kind of "info" (like the solution to the problem), but that doesn't mean it's stalled.

It also doesn't mean "nobody picked up the ticket in a while", that would just mean maybe the priority should be changed.

"stalled" is all about the "can currently not be acted on" part of it, not the info part. It means there is some (usually outside) reason that currently this can't be acted on whether we want it or not, so people should not expect updates on it or go "ping?" until that changed.

In Bugzilla, this status was called NEEDS_INFO

Sorry but Wikimedia Bugzilla never ever had such a status. :)

Do we want to keep this status, and if so, rename it?

I'm very very reluctant to rename because we had that long debate already in T212 and I don't see sudden new arguments.

Or should we rather try to educate users in its meaning?

That one please. "Nothing is blocking this and no further input or consideration is needed and you could pick up this task and solve it" is not "stalled".

SRE requires stalled status for our work and it came over with us from RT. You gotta think beyond bug reports :)

In T95746#1199343, @Aklapper wrote:

I'm very very reluctant to rename because we had that long debate already in T212 and I don't see sudden new arguments.

As I read it, the conclusion there was along the lines of 'We can't figure out a better name now, and we can always try to figure out a better name later if people do get confused'. Apparently, the naming does confuse people, so if we can find a better name, that might still be an option to consider.

The name 'stalled', as far as I see it, does not clearly convey the message it's waiting for something specific. 'Stalled' simply means 'something that has been brought to a standstill' ('the stalled engine'), and a task which is not currently progressing is stalled in that sense.

In T212#19962, the alternative 'Waiting' was suggested. I agree with @Aklapper that 'people might come up with interpretations like "I'm waiting for a developer to take a look at this and fix this!!!"', but I feel that's a less natural interpretation than interpreting 'stalled' as, well, stalled.

I'm afraid no name will ever erase some interpretation. So I'd rather point people to the on-wiki documentation and improve that documentation.

Would blocked be a better name for it?

I think so

I don't like "Blocked". It creates confusion with the "Blocks"/"Blocked by" field. A task shouldn't be set to "Stalled"/"Blocked" simply because it is blocked by other Phabricator tasks. I think renaming the status to "Blocked" will lead to more abuse of the status, not less, and it will certainly create more confusion.

I like Daniel's interpretation of the purpose of "Stalled" (it means you're waiting for something or someone external to this tracker). "Stalled" is also used when waiting for community consensus on a site request, or waiting for clarification from a bug reporter who doesn't seem to check his or her email very often.

agree with everything @TTO said here