This is definitely the key issue.
We have a substantial number of packages that come in with little or no testing. Maybe early intervention on this front will make later reviewing easier.
If we implement @aammd’s idea of having packages submitted as pull requests, we could have them as PRs against a repository that could run some tests. (Or maybe the ro package could have a ro_check() function for this). These wouldn’t necessarily be required to pass for submittal, but they could reduce the burden on the first-pass reviewer.