title: How to Tell if Pull Request Has Been Merged
body: <p>So my question was <em>kind of</em> addressed by <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15213081/how-can-you-tell-if-a-github-pull-request-has-been-released">this post</a>, but I'm still a little confused.  Basically, I'm checking out a repo on GitHub, and I see that there are currently 34 open and 173 closed pull requests.  My current understanding is this:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>If somebody makes a stupid pull request, the maintainers will close it</li>
  <li>If somebody makes a legit pull request, the maintainers may merge it, at which point the request is closed</li>
  <li>If a request is open (legit or not) then that means the maintainers just haven't dealt with it yet (or are in the process of resolving conflicts)</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>However, a lot of the open requests in this repo are very old, even though they seem to make reasonable changes.  This makes me wonder whether my 2nd assumption above is correct.  So which is it, do pull requests close when they are merged, or do they remain open?  And if they remain open, how can I tell that they were in fact merged, and aren't just in limbo?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance.</p>