Current best practice for "retiring" a project on github and npmjs.org?

Question

I'm the maintainer of a public project on github (and npm). When I created the project it solved my particular requirements better than available alternatives. However, the community has caught up and surpassed my solution. I don't even use the tool I created any more, and I'm not interested in maintaining it. I updated the README to this effect, but I'm still getting pull requests. Should I simply take it down? Is this considered rude given others are forking it and trying to contribute? So far I've had no luck getting these others to accept responsibility as its maintainer(s).

I'm not looking for arbitrary subjective opinions, rather evidence of some kind of consensus -- perhaps in the form of documentation or a howto from a recognized authority. Thanks.

Answer 1

1. Edit README.md and place big shiny deprecation notice telling "this is no longer supported, please consider using XXX instead"
2. Use npm deprecate to place a deprecation notice on every install.

Is this considered rude given others are forking it and trying to contribute?

Yes.