JDRiverRun

When I hear of a package that may be interesting, I immediately check its repo page to see how many issues and PRs are still open. I look to see whether they have garnered any responses, especially if the submissions are of high quality. Years of issues building up isn't a good sign. This isn't 100% reliable, as different skilled developers approach issues and PRs quite differently, but it gives you some information. And there are outliers, like multiple-cursors, whose developer is very skilled and motivated, but whose popularity overwhelmed his resources.

For simple package, "no updates" for 5 years is usually fine. But before investing energy in a larger new package, I want to know whether it will still be working well in the next 5 years.

There are a variety of "self-quoting" constructs in elisp (including all :keywords!).

(eq (quote nil) nil) ; ==> t  
(eq (quote t) t) ; ==> t  
(eq (quote :some-keyword) :some-keyword) ; ==> t

Outline mode works well for this. I use my own small outli package to set this up automatically with nice formatting and “speed key” access at the beginning of headlines. Tab to fold.