The people complaining about the long RTBC queue are missing the point. The point is that there's a much, much longer "needs review" queue, and there always has been.
Perhaps they are missing *your* point. The RTBC queue is a big problem as well. Many patches in RTBC represent a massive effort by several people and it is a complete shame to let them sit there, silently. Losing a baserunner on 3rd base is much more painful than losing one at second base. We terribly need a branch maintainer or two for D7. Lack of throughput at RTBC demotivates the 'needs review' queue, and even before that - patch creation. Examples of RTBC silence: 1. make drupal_set_title() use check_plain() by default. - http://drupal.org/node/242873 2. No way to flush form errors during iterative programatic form submission - http://drupal.org/node/180063 3. Node revisions test fails if admin has a personal timezone offset - http://drupal.org/node/283246