The biggest problem with the NIPs repo is the 134 open pull requests. Most of these are stale which leaves all those things in limbo, not to mention turns off new contributors. I don't think decentralizing maintenance of the protocol makes sense, it's a bridge too far, but there are many projects who provide a good example of how to maintain protocol documents, BIPs for example.
Discussion
I actually love the open PRs. I look at them more than the approved NIPs these days.
Open PRs for me are just ideas. Some are good, some are bad, and most of them are just terribly written, especially if the author is not coding them.
Unless somebody codes those ideas, they will never go forward. And that's ok. They can be there waiting for the light of day.
100%
this is a great take
As a maintainer, I regularly review the open PRs looking to close stale ones. But most of them are good ideas that just need a client sponsor or two to go through.