There is a middle ground where sometimes the maintainer does accept a PR and sometimes they don't for whatever reasons they have. Maybe it's all clearer to you

There is a middle ground where sometimes the maintainer does accept a PR and sometimes they don't for whatever reasons they have. Maybe it's all clearer to you, but this isn't about you and what you want or need. This is what about maintainers need to keep their sanity and not abandon the project(s) all together. Be happy with what you get, accept rejection / disagreement, especially if nobody asked for anything. And most of all, just accept the ambiguity. Learn to live with it. I maintain that just contacting developers first before making a change/feature + PR is the best way possible to at least have some chance that the PR will be merged.