There are a few project management techniques that can avoid a lot of this. Mainly, don't submit a PR until you get a maintainer's approval on the purpose of th

There are a few project management techniques that can avoid a lot of this. Mainly, don't submit a PR until you get a maintainer's approval on the purpose of the issue and the plan for the implementation. Time is valuable. When I want to convince maintainers to spend their time on my issues, I try to pitch in a way that requires the minimal time investment from them. Ask yes or no questions, provide multiple proposals with pros/cons, and look a past PRs that have landed so you can replicate the qualities of an acceptable PR. A few of these lessons were learned from successful OS projects with issue templates that gently guide contributors. Most of them were learned the hard way by misguided effort wasting a lot of peoples' time.