My concern here is these colors are part of a standard pattern across all of Phabricator, and I've been explicit in making sure they're consistently used and applied, so the entire suite of apps is easy to use and pick up with common patterns. I worry about giving such additional flexibility as it increases cognitive load on users. Functionally, there are 3 colored states we apply consistently, "open", "closed", and "archive". Additionally there are 3 colored states for policy, "default", "more open", "less open".

Mostly the issue falls with if we allow individual applications having unique colors and states and those all go in different ways, the overall product of Phabricator becomes harder to use and understand.

@chad, those are fair arguments and with that said, I would have the same concerns.

If applying any defined transaction color is not an option, I honestly can't think of any other suggestion of showing the active status color somewhere else, where it would still improve the fast scanning of a task status (other than the location of the task status itself).

FYI, I have recently introduced Phabricator in my working environment (and have gratefully used Phabricator in my previous working environment!) in order to improve our efficiency. This request is one of the many comments which I have got since introducing Phabricator. If you'd say that this a request which you would choose to reject due wanting to guarantee the overall easy usage of Phabricator; I would 100% understand that from your point of view.

In that case, let me know, so you can close this task. I will then make sure to take care of this issue myself by modifying our copy of the source code (assuming it will be fairly easy to make the required adjustments).

Thanks in advance for your feedback!