Recently on #gcc, I have been conversing with several others on the topic of patches lost in the tides of the gcc-patches mailing list. I flagged Jeff Downs' recent message as an example of a patch that has been waiting since November (http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2010-06/msg00177.html). I then volunteered to be a patch pinger, to watch the mailing list and ping patches that don't get responses. I currently do this for Win64 work anyway, so I already read most of the mailing list as it is.
To do this between Kai and myself for Win64, he posts a commit message at the end of the thread (Committed rev ###) to signify to me to delete the thread from my inbox. Every so often, I ask him about any threads that haven't been addressed. I offered to Ian to do the same thing for the whole mailing list if we can make it a policy that people who commit changes do what Kai is doing so that it's clear that the thread is done with. I don't mind throwing a few pings down, and I already have the whole ML tagged with a gmail label.