MY only addition to this important discussion is this:

We need a way to communicate to users that a problem is important to
the project, would be useful and progressive if it was done, but for
which we do not have the resources to make it happen.

The label: "Too Expensive" doesn't really tick the boxes for me.

The reason why I think this is important is because quite often we have
bugs that just sort of kick around for years and years, and there's no
understanding from users about their responsibility to stop expecting
free-riding on volunteer maintenance and developer time and start
taking responsibility somewhat for raising the needed resources to get
problems attention.

I just don't know how to communicate this fact well enough.

We already have "help wanted" [1] - would this be suitable?

I've seen this label being used successfully in other projects:

• On the one hand it's a good way to mark a bug as valid but express that it's not a priority and might not be fixed anytime soon (or at all) due to lack of time and/or knowledge in that specific area.
  
• On the other hand it encourages people wo *might* have time and/or knowledge at their hands to submit a fix.

[1] https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/issues?label_name%5B%5D=help+wanted

The converse would be a bug that would be marked "If we fixed this the
project would be worse off, so we won't fix it" but more polite. The
Won't Fix label in LP was always contentious for being too blunt for
most users.

Well, there's just no way to let people down easy in this case... We can't tell them that we won't fix their issue and not tell them at the same time ;-)

The only thing that came close was the "opinion" status in LaunchPad which was as spongy as it gets, and often was what triggered unnecessary discussions in the first place.

Personally I appreciate projects that clearly communicate if issues are "won't fix" as long as they give a reason. I might still disagree with their reasoning, but at least I know what to expect (or rather what not to expect). The worst are projects that close bugs without giving a reason. Only slightly better are projects that never dare to close a bug and keep people hanging forever not knowing what the actual status of a bug is as a consequence (oh yes, Inkscape is - or at least was - such a project ;-) . Maybe we can change something about this now.)

Cheers
Patrick