Consider replacing "actively maintained" icon

Problem/Motivation

@drumm has brought up concerns about this in a few Slack threads and issues where making this decision was not quite in the scope. They're good points so I think they should get a dedicated issue.

From #3284347: Security Advisory icon/link problems

I don’t think “actively maintained” is good to call out with an icon. It is often stale information, and “actively” is subjective anyway. I don't think it is useful to know when evaluating projects.

Some of the other values, like “Obsolete” and “Unsupported” are useful information. They are likely accurate, and are a definite reason to be cautious of a project. I think these should be shown as negative indicators.

This follows what we do on Drupal.org project pages like https://www.drupal.org/project/swiftmailer. Negative indicators are called out with an orange triangle with an exclamation point. “Minimally maintained” is not necessarily negative, it could be a straightforward project that only needs minimal maintenance, so it gets a more-neutral grey triangle. The implementation of that is at https://git.drupalcode.org/project/drupalorg/-/blob/e31465608d1380345834...

That said, we could change the options, labels, or descriptions any time on Drupal.org, and we can not be stuck waiting for a core upgrade cycle to make that sort of change. So this information should probably come directly from Drupal.org’s API with minimal processing.

From Slack

I still think showing “actively maintained” is not helpful. That data gets stale and is subjective. Like we do on Drupal.org project pages, I recommend not showing anything for “actively maintained”, and only calling out negative indicators like “No further development” & “Unsupported”

From Slack

I still think it's the reverse of what is useful for people. “Maintained” could mean just about anything, there are no promises a maintainer will keep working or proactively update the status. Showing an icon for that is clutter. We have some clear warnings that are good information instead.

If we decide this should in fact be removed, we'd have the added benefit of avoiding some of the image-tweaking currently needed in #3267678: Use icon to assist with understanding of maintenance status

Update July 7

@drumm also said this in Slack, in response to this issue being created

Those labels are kinda misleading and vague. Would an average site builder know what “maintained” and “active” meant. They actually are pretty meaningless, as I’ve said. I’m more concerned about the icons on the project cards than the search criteria. For example, there should be nothing for “Actively maintained,” instead “Unsupported” should be called out. There should be nothing for “Active” development status, “No further development” & “Obsolete” should be called out.

The criteria is really secondary to the icon on the project cards. I’d design it as figuring out the project card first, then worry about filtering criteria matching.

The project cards are the first thing someone will see, before filtering

Steps to reproduce

Proposed resolution

Remaining tasks

• ✅ File an issue about this project
• ☐ Manual Testing
• ☐ Code Review
• ☐ Accessibility Review
• ☐ Automated tests needed/written?