This is a vicious cycle of a mentoring problem. If the maintainer never learned and practiced "role shifting" as a part of the developer process, they are goin

This is a vicious cycle of a mentoring problem. If the maintainer never learned and practiced "role shifting" as a part of the developer process, they are going to have a bad time if the project gains any traction whatsoever. Worse, there's no easy way for a mentor to swoop in and teach them basic role shifting tactics. Because such an attempt would likely be interpreted as just a user giving yet another uninformed opinion. Edit: And such a maintainer is unlikely to be able to delegate to newcomers since mentoring isn't part of their skillset. (Thus the vicious cycle.)