So I ended up cleaning out some retired (~20) people from metadata.xml, where I found this interesting piece of metadata.xml:
And here the hint for all you people again: A DAMN HERD AIN’T NO MAINTAINER. SO IF YOUR HERD IS MAINTAINING A PACKAGE, PUT IT INTO <herd> and not into the <maintainer>. kthnxbye.
That’s actually *really* common, from what I remember of going through a lot of metadata XML files. Or at least it used to be.
I agree that it’s redundant, but I think there’s probably a lot more like that out there.