Thank you for sharing your perspective! You have prompted me to rethink this from the user's point of view. I believe we indeed need to first address the question of "how can we know if this project is still viable."
We could an issue for code forges including github to implement it such that it is shown as project metadata along side license, language, etc. Perhaps the project can be automatically marked as inactive if the maintainer(s) don't respond every 3 months or so (of course with provision to easily revert it).
It could even be something like a badge of honor for developers to strive for which needs to be earned. Like they have in industrial environments where they proudly post how many months or years they have gone without a serious injury.
Maybe people would respond positively to a prominent "safety notice", if I saw "No further defects found since July 2023" that would be more encouraging than not for a lot of projects.