Downvotes are toxic. Let's not Reddit-ify the internet any more than it has been. Stars, and clones are good enough to see if a repo is any good. Now... arguably we should have more insight into how many people have "liked" the repo in the last month... that'd be useful.

Check the issue log... see what activity has been going on lately. Lots of issues, and lots of issues closed... that's probably a good thing. Lots of issues, and no issues closed... that's not great. No issues created recently... forget it, it's dead.