So I look in the Changes file, find that there were 5 releases during a one month period, then nothing since April. It goes back on my ignore list, since presumably the author had fun for a while then lost interest in it.

On the contrary, it is still under heavy development (although the release frequency has slowed a little, mostly because we are now working on the really hard parts, and they take more thought/experimentation). You were looking at the "official" releases. There have been a number of developer releases since April. There will likely be another official release by the end of the YAPC::NA hackathon.

(N.B. Artificially increasing the version number will NOT help.)

I would never do that, mostly because I am not sure I really agree with your opinions of quality anyway. There are many very stable, very solid modules which have not been touched for years.