Robert Schweikert wrote in http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2012-06/msg00489.html :

I believe that an underlying issue to the overall state is the package maintenance model. Look at any perl or python package in the devel projects and you'll find tons of people listed as "maintainers" but almost non of them is a "true" maintainer. Everyone of the listed "maintainers" is inherited from some parent project and in the end no one really feels responsible.

Indeed - but: it is the way it is represented in the webui that is misleading. If you use the command line client, `osc meta pkg`, you get a *much* more useful and concise set of people - and usually the people who *really are* responsible. If the so-obtained list is empty, you can consider the package abandoned already.

That this is an issue is also evident in the increased mail traffic on the list about lingering SRs.

The problem with lingering SRs has more to do with the "maintainer"-called role being overloaded - *in prj context*. I concur with your observation. 22 "maintainers" in games, 42 in devel:libraries:c_c++ don't paint a good picture. But server:irc's list of 8 also sports the linger problem.

There are a handful of prj-level actions:

- the true maintainer, IOW, "I maintain indeed all packages in here". This only makes sense for a limited set of develprjs, predominantly those that deal with a single "software stack" (a group of obviously related packages). Examples are network:mail:zarafa, network:telephony:asterisk*. But not games, not d:l:c_c++.

- fallback maintainer: responsibility to accept lingering SRs not having been accepted by the bspkg maintainer in a handful of days (3/5/7? maybe settable within the pkgmeta?), provided they meet best judgment.

- mentor: responsibility to 1. decline *new* packages - sorting out unsuitable license, ...; 2. approve new packages and perhaps send corrections immediately afterwards, ...;

These extra roles are merely for self-description of users, and should simply have the same commit permissions as the current "maintainer" role do now.