[withinboredom]

I see open issues as a pretty good signal that people are using the software and people care about its development, but maybe the number of contributors is too small. In these cases, I might even open the PR myself. Issues without replies though is probably the worst signal you can send as a maintainer. Closing issues without replying and letting a stale bot passively aggressively close issues is probably tied, but it’s usually hidden away.