I like the "Bethesda" model of talking about projects.
Consider posts that look like projects as purely academic, like papers. Until a project is declared.

The best way is not to declare any expectations.
Imagine a company. They declare a future product.
Expectations set a value and this is discounted. The shares of the company gain almost at once, and over time increase in value.
The product is released. It's excellent. But all the same company shares can drop in value. Expectations, for some reason, were higher than that.

Especially if projects are open source and most contributers move things along as time permits. Things must move fast to maintain interest. Better not to attract interest that will be lost. Interest is more easily gained than recovered.