I read the last commit date as a status indicator - it's subjective, but it works fairly well.
Of course it doesn't always mean a lot... I have 40-something public repos, and I haven't touched like 30 in the past year, but I use most of them, and for some of them I would even give support on request. But if someone would open a PR, with adding a random project dead note in the readme, I wouldn't be particularly happy about it. (But I would have no problem if someone opened an issue asking a question, like a "welfare check")
But for projects that are used by more than 5 people, I think commit date's a reasonable indicator, and personally wouldn't try getting anything more.
Of course, there is also an official indicator, used sometimes: the archival of the repo, which makes it read-only.
Comments
I read the last commit date as a status indicator - it's subjective, but it works fairly well.
Of course it doesn't always mean a lot... I have 40-something public repos, and I haven't touched like 30 in the past year, but I use most of them, and for some of them I would even give support on request. But if someone would open a PR, with adding a random project dead note in the readme, I wouldn't be particularly happy about it. (But I would have no problem if someone opened an issue asking a question, like a "welfare check")
But for projects that are used by more than 5 people, I think commit date's a reasonable indicator, and personally wouldn't try getting anything more.
Of course, there is also an official indicator, used sometimes: the archival of the repo, which makes it read-only.