Emacs discusses web-based development workflows

Ok, so now you are conceding albeit grudgingly that is possible for forges to be optional and it doesn't have to be all or nothing. That's a start and you can move on to look at the actual spectrum of options and what is possible and how even traditional forges are used very differently among different projects.

> (Remember, we're talking about _popularity_ as being the prime metric for measuring worthiness!)

That's yet another strawman. I am certainly not using that as a metric and I doubt that anyone really is. Forges are popular but popularity itself isn't the prime metric. The benefits they may bring to a project are. My position can be more accurately summarized as: Multiple options are available today for forges and they are worthy of consideration for free software projects which have a more email based workflow to evaluate whether it fits into their needs because it may help them do some things in a better way.

> Sourcehut (with less than 25K registered users) really shouldn't be lumped in with anything else

This kind of special pleading doesn't negate the fact that it falls under the definition of a forge fundamentally although I agree it has some unique features. Pagure - covered at https://lwn.net/Articles/687821/ has some other interesting features as well. If you are evaluating forges, you can't stop at GitHub.