However, I did, in the recent past, submit PRs, without offering
patches, for packages that were known to fail and, in most cases,
this led to a quick and positive resolution of the issue.
I think this follows in the same way that people who are more
assertive about following up on open issues (whether its an open
source project or your energy supplier or bank or whatever) will tend
to get results faster than those who are more passive. Whether this
is a good thing depends on whether you are the former or the latter,
and one might wonder what pkgsrc work didn't get done due to your
issue being prioritised instead.
I'm not saying what you did was wrong, but it's important to consider
what the unforeseen consequences of it might have been, or whether
this points to a larger problem, for example maintainers not paying
attention to the bulk build reports for their packages.
Hopefully the tone of this email hasn't been too negative