How to convince maintainer to use --as-needed?

[Dmitry Smirnov <onlyjob@member.fsf.org>]

Dear mentors,

I seek your advice regarding the best practice with using --as-needed.

Recently I tried to convince two package maintainers to use --as-needed in 
order to reduce overlinking. Surprisingly this time this idea was opposed with 
great resistance as none of maintainers but me had previous experience with --
as-needed.

Because in their eyes I have neither expertise nor reputation I couldn't 
convince them that benefits are outweight risks. (--as-needed removes dozen of 
packages from Depends)

I've been asked to provide a document or a quote from reputable DD regarding 
using --as-needed as recommended practice in Debian, if such.

So here am I asking for your expertise.

Thank you.

Those who interested might read the following document describing the problem 
and the solutions. 

  https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Overlinking_issues_in_packaging

(Links to Debian mail list discussions in the end of this document are worth 
reading as well.)

All the best,
Dmitry.

P.S. does anyone knows good examples of debian package using --as-needed?