No. These are useful, with maybe the exception of Top. They represent different things which are useful to have split out.
I’d rather this didn’t happen as being able to track if something is both starred and unread or new is useful. Maybe have a poll, see who agrees across the customer base?
Please don’t. Even over there where avatars change more frequently, it’s a much easier way of quickly seeing who the top contributors (and OP/LP) are without worrying about it. This is useful to me. TLDR on this and the next point - images/colours are easier to distinguish at a glance than words.
The colours of the categories helps split them out without paying any real attention to the text of the label after a while. Again, I find this useful.
1 post vs 0 replies just seems like semantics to me. Maybe this makes a difference to some, worth a poll?
There are actually somethings that Discourse gets right compared to other forum software, and some of them are listed here as candidates for removal. Please, please, please either leave them be and let people who don't want them remove them with CSS, or make them admin options on a per-site basis. Don't just make them disappear.