The matrix is not unmaintained.
My experience was this: Some time ago, I saw the Midiman DMAN PCI was
listed as untested. I bought one of these cards and did quite a bit
of testing, then posted the results to alsa-devel as it says at the
top of the matrix that this is the proper place to send corrections.
Summary: playback worked, recording didn't (at the time).
To this day the card is still listed as untested. I appreciate that
it's a lot of work for a volunteer, and I don't mean to criticise you
personally. It's just with ALSA going into the mainstream kernel this
matrix is a really crucial document, and the information that exists
in the community is not being incorporated into it.
I think there's a strong case for one of the Linux distributors to pay
someone to maintain this information. At the moment, it seems none of
them could answer the question 'will my soundcard work?', since they
all appear to refer back to the ALSA site.
Cheers
Daniel