I say this as someone who does browse the web view for repos a lot, so I get the niceness of browsing online... but even then sometimes I'm just checking out a repo cuz ripgrep locally works better.
when he's working on his own project, obviously he never uses the about section or releases
but if you're exploring projects, you do
(though I agree for the tree view is bad for everyone)
I also look for releases if it's a program I want to install... much easier to download a processed artifact than pull the project and build it myself.
But, I think I'm coming around to the idea that we might need to rethink what the point of the repository is for outside users. There's a big difference in the needs of internal and external users, and perhaps it's time for some new ideas.
(I mean, it's been 18 years since Github was founded, we're due for a shakeup)