Lots of other active contributors similarly already have lots of responsibility to Nixpkgs, and they take it seriously and live up to the requirements. Why doesn’t that responsibility count?
I probably monitor the Staging channel more than most people, but I had no idea you had taken on that work and commited to it. If I missed it, I’m sure most people have.
It should count. I would like it to. But because it is invisible and fleeting and informal, it is easily overlooked or ignored. It helps a lot for more people to know that you and others have volunteered to accept that sort of responsibility. It is not trivial at all, I understand that. So it would help if a few people wrote down what they are volunteering to be responsible for, what kind of time they are devoting to it and explain to others what areas don’t have enough help at the moment or are at risk because someone is burning out. Occasionally you’d probably want to give some updates about how things are going, how that work can be expected to change in coming months, set expectations. This is starting to sound a lot like a team. It doesn’t have to be super formal with exclusive membership being required to volunteer.
I’m advocating for this in particular because I want Nixpkgs maintenance to be more prominent and celebrated for its value. I want to write about this system works. I’ve answered questions about how Nixpkgs is maintained and people find it hard to navigate without being in the “in crowd”. I may just happen to know what might work for them, or the right contacts, but this doesn’t scale. I want to be able to get funding from various sources and describe what activities it will support and to whom it should go. I want people to be able to rely upon this ecosystem and to trust it.