Perhaps maintainers should stand up and review some packages of
their peers?
Absolutely. This already happens a little bit. It would be excellent
if more people could do it.
Maybe my experience with Fedora and Cygwin could be of interest. As
a new packager, I made my first package ('logiweb') and submitted it
to Debian, Fedora, and Cygwin:
Aug 2009 Submitted http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=543550
Sep 2009 Submitted https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=523715
Mar 2010 Package pushed to Fedora stable
May 2010 Sent ITP to Cygwin
May 2010 Package uploaded to Cygwin
Sep-Mar I corrected the package under guidance of a Fedora sponsor
(thanks). I was also lucky enough that a DD looked at my Debian
package and gave guidance (thanks). But it seems that DD's are
overloaded. At least my package is not in Debian yet.
Once my Fedora package was in shape, I was asked to demonstrate my
technical skills by either preparing one more Fedora package or do a
pre-review of some other package. So I chose to do a pre-review.
I picked a package, but somebody else was faster, and the package
was processed before I could get started. Then I shortlisted ten
packages
I found I was competent to pre-review, waited a few days, three
packages were taken, picked one of the remaining packages, assigned
it to myself, and did the pre-review. When my pre-review was
accepted by my sponsor, my package was uploaded.
Once accepted in Fedora, uploading to Cygwin went very smoothly (thanks).
So this is my experience with Fedora: When I came with my package,
the Fedora community did something for me (reviewed the package)
then required me to do something for them (do a pre-review), and the
package was accepted. That seems quite fair.
Furthermore, Fedora had a list of packages waiting for review, and
it was easy to find one to pick.
I am not saying Fedora is ideal. On a Fedora mailing list, I just
saw an invitation to come and celebrate the one-year anniversary of
a Fedora review request.
My point, however, is that having some sort of formalized way in
which maintainers can unload DDs could be a good thing.