I think the #1 of your list can be easily done by @James in form of a redirect (and yes I agree, that leads to a dead/old link, so it needs to change).
Since we talk remove things… I am A) in favour of this because pings to a remote always just cost even if minimal, resources, but B) not in favour because it removes any “backlink” we have inside the admin to our forums and petitions.
What about a code snippet instead that lets users disable this widget(s) easily? We could add it to the snippet repot, something like shown here How to Disable Unwanted Widgets in WordPress Admin (2 Ways)
That would allow us to keep the widget by default but users would easily know how to remove it.