The impression I get is that Linus looks for messages from people
whom he has worked with in the past. A patch coming from someone completely
new sometimes gets lost in the shuffle just because of the volume of mail.
Oftentimes an approach that works is to send the patch to one of these
people (i.e. someone who has worked on that general part of the kernel
before), and have them look it over and send it to Linus.
-Eric
-- "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And lines to code before I sleep, And lines to code before I sleep."