A potential solution to improving upon the balancing act might be to have an intermediate role of reviewer which is a step above a contributor, but not a core dev. This would be similar in nature to the already existing triager group, but specific to PR reviews. It would also provide the ability for the reviewer to modify or add labels, such as skip news and skip issue for any minor PRs that do not warrant creating an issue for, such as documentation typos. Ultimately, the goal of this role would be to reserve the core developer’s time as much as possible. The final approval for merging the PR would still be on the core developers, but it would allow them to spend less time on doing so if reviewers could assist with some of the other parts.
Based on my experience as a newer contributor (started within the last month), so far I have felt that my code reviews have been quite well received for the most part. Admittedly there have been a few times where questions were ignored, but usually I do feel that my feedback is valued.
The only issue is that there’s no intermediate goal for people such as myself to work towards. Someone could spend a considerable amount of time reviewing code and have the same exact recognition as someone who was only made a single contribution. It may also serve well as another stepping stone towards eventually becoming a core developer. In general, I think the python community could significantly benefit from having more specialized roles beyond contributor, triager, and core developer.
Would it be appropriate to start a new discussion topic to discuss the above topic at length and perhaps have a vote from the community? This is related to the issue being discussed, but could easily be a topic on its own.
Edit: I just realized after receiving clarification that the role I was describing would apply to a triager: Proposal: Create "Bug Triage" team on GitHub - #27 by aeros