The problem seems to be that projects just lapse, the owner's stop paying attention and the number of forks starts to pile up. Perhaps when the number of forks

The problem seems to be that projects just lapse, the owner's stop paying attention and the number of forks starts to pile up. Perhaps when the number of forks hits a certain point everyone that has a fork should receive an email asking if they'd be happy to maintain the project. People could then put themselves forwards and the original maintainer could then review the candidates and decide who should take over (or confirm that they want to maintain the project).