One approach that I'd like to try out is to use a 2x2 set of labels for priority and effort. For example
- priority-high (red)
- priority-low (gray)
- effort-high (gray)
- effort-low (red)
The idea is that any issue would be assigned both a priority and effort. Items that are high priority and low effort should be tackled first (hence, two loud, red labels). Items that are low priority and high effort can probably be deferred (hence, two muted, gray labels).
Other labels could be more ad-hoc, but it'd be nice to use colors to group labels. For example, a single color might be used to group all labels that point to a specific skimage package.
That said, I've always been terrible at labeling issues. (It's right up there with forgetting to add to change-logs.)
-Tony