Without reading the paper (don't hate), but just approaching the question as an experienced software engineer, technical debt SHOULD lead to a higher rejection

Without reading the paper (don't hate), but just approaching the question as an experienced software engineer, technical debt SHOULD lead to a higher rejection of pull requests in a lot of situations. Assumptions: Let's assume we are talking about a system with technical debt that is well understood to the maintainers, but difficult to address in a piecemeal fashion (most of them). Additionally, let's assume most pull requests are from external contributors for toy features with no deep understanding of said tech debt the features may be aggravating or making more difficult to address (most of them). In such a state of things, it is absolutely the job of the maintainer to be extra choosy and reject more frequently pull requests that only make the task of paying down the technical debt that much harder. Of course, taken to the extreme, this can ruin the project. But in the interim while a rewrite or refactoring or cleanup is ongoing, it may be justifiable to reject changes that constantly cause the target to move back.