I feel that the way that GitHub and others do social coding is a bit backwards in regards to this article. Issues shouldn't implicitly be owned by the owner of the repo but by the reporter. The reporter cares about the problem. The issue tracker should be a way to find others who care about the same problem. If the repo owner doesn't care they should feel no obligation. But the way the issue trackers are structured those issues implicitly becomes the repo maintainers problem.
Also, there should be more ways to "praise" a project.
Also, there should be more ways to "praise" a project.