You've mentioned the "green square game" a lot, and I don't see how this is a problem. If someone makes a PR that is nothing but the .gitignore file, you can just reject it in one second. (Unless it is a well-researched and well-justified change, in which case you can gratefully merge it.)
I think as a solo maintainer on a project and getting many github notifications (and DMs about the notification) for their PRs every day, it had a negative effect on me.
