Some Issues believe they were closed BEFORE they were created

Summary

In both Production and Staging there are Issue records that claim to have been closed BEFORE they were created. For example, consider Issue 7221343 in Staging:

• created_at 2019-05-06 16:40:09 UTC
• closed_at 2016-03-11 03:45:40 UTC (3 years before it was created!)

Steps to reproduce

In Rails console for Production or Staging: Issue.where('created_at > closed_at').count

What is the current bug behavior?

created_at > closed_at

What is the expected correct behavior?

created_at < closed_at

Relevant logs and/or screenshots

This problem was encountered during code review for MR !16775.

Output of checks

This bug happens on GitLab.com. There are 625 records affected in Production, at least as recently as 2019-07. There are 3 records affected in Staging, as recently as 2019-05-06. Staging represents a 2-year-old snapshot of Production, so it seems this problem has become much more common over time.

Possible fixes

• This problem seems to be related to importing issues in a "closed" state (based on the 3 records in Staging, so this is just a hunch).
• Adding a validation to Issue could help expose the bug, but would only be necessary if we can't identify the bug in troubleshooting.