What citeria do you use to quickly determine if a github project is finished/useable?

Question

When I browse github I have a hard time differentiating high quality code from half-finished crap without taking a serious look at the code. What are some good ways to quickly size up a project? Rubyforge allows people to designate a "Development Status". SourceForge has a "recommend" feature. Is there some feature that I've overlooked? I just look at the number of forks and watchers. Is there a better way? I don't see a checkout count, or any other measure of popularity.

Answer 1

Recent activity is a big one. If the project does not have recent developer commits or there are open bugs, tickets, issues, questions, etc without developer responses then move on.

Answer 2

I would check for documentation. Well advanced code should have associated documentation, while fledgling projects are too busy getting their code and architecture done to create documentation, which will probably have to change by the time they release anyway. Basically, writing documentation says to me that you think the code is stable and functional enough for users to be able to benefit from it.