I've recently come across github projects that I could really use, but appear to have been abandoned, with lots of issues and important pull requests, perhaps 100+ forks. Often, there isn't an alternative project.
Do I use the code as is? Do I pick a fork and ignore the others? Do I manually pull in code from the pull requests? How? Is there any chance I or anyone else could somehow organize and take off where the original coder left off?
Best Answer
You could send a message to the members of the network that is automatically created with anyone who is forking a project to begin with. (at least those who commited code after the fork, if there are so much)(Network\Members tab).
What you should do next is highly dependent on the project and its community (or lack of community) :
Marketing Part : sometime a rename of the project when the reboot fork occur is a good way to attract new programmers and users, and give a second chance to the project to gain traction.
You should also check if anything that is done is allowed by the license, if you cannot find a way to communicate with the original programmers.