That's not related to the issue at hand, which is that users searching for actively maintained projects are getting sent to old unmaintained projects that are a

That's not related to the issue at hand, which is that users searching for actively maintained projects are getting sent to old unmaintained projects that are abandoned for reasons other than "it is so stable it needs no updates". It's like trying to install CUPS (last updated a month ago) but being redirected to cup-stacker-pro (last updated in 1997). Sure, it's definitely old code, but is it really a good idea to install it? But I also disagree that old code is "battle tested". Old codebases and old projects are a different story. Running a binary built 10 years ago isn't generally a good idea, but running a modern release of a 10-year-old project is almost always better than a project started 2 weeks ago. The benefit of old codebases is the experience of the maintainers involved, but you don't get that benefit if the codebase hasn't been maintained (or you're using a release that was made before they gained that experience).