OP have provided us a new knowledge that we can use to make checking of projects faster to determine potential projects that are good for engagement such as doing bounty participation and if there's a chance, doing investment as well. So it is really in need to better know the project to avoid regrets in the end. This information will be useful at this point of time until future usage.
Because you mentioned about Bounties, it is good to focus on bounties that are managed by professional managers. They mostly reject scam projects but as always it never is good to totally rely on the others' works. Do it yourself and take care of your capital.
Checking out github is the fastest way to detect scam projects and others like team members and use cases follows too, but github says it all, very good post 👍
Before checking github, you can think of something like "If something sounds too good to be true, it will be better to stay away from it". Personally, if I see something like that, I don't want to spend time to check more.
good catch, this will make it easier for us to know how new projects or tokens work. this information is enough to help me to always observe every new project that arises. more than that I think we all know that an important role in a project is dependent on the developer's reputation and the performance of the project team itself.
Your first practice (first investigation) takes lot of time from you but next ones will cost you less amount of time. The more practice you do, the less amount of time you have to spend for each.