>I can't maintain a large and complex project supported by lots of maintainers on my own, as a fork
Do you need to "maintain" a complex project? Why can't you just add the patches you want on your fork and update as far as it suits you? Just as the upstream doesn't have to review or accept PRs, neither do you. Users can still see the network of forks, and ime there are few that are actively updated.
How can i tell why every fork was created? How can I tell it'll fix my issue?
The idea of maintaining a fork for the sake of a patch affecting only one version of the original software is silly. Not only that, others mentioned "networks" but how do users tell what I patched, diff every fork one by one? Perhaps there is a feature I don't know about since PRs just work for me.
Do you need to "maintain" a complex project? Why can't you just add the patches you want on your fork and update as far as it suits you? Just as the upstream doesn't have to review or accept PRs, neither do you. Users can still see the network of forks, and ime there are few that are actively updated.