I never truly understood the micromanagement quality-gatekeeping in #OSS. Surely, from past experience, we can expect that X will have more favourable tradeoffs than Y. But as long as Y provides direct value to the user with potential refactoring Y->X without change to the surface API, then why not accept? Why have lingering PRs for years? Why discourage contributors? Why defer value?
Ultimately every codebase is a spaghetti pile of crap. Relatively, subjectively and as time goes objectively.