I think it's a deliberate barrier to entry: they're basically saying "if you can't be bothered to learn how to do it, we don't want your contributions."
Linus occasionally rants about some of the crap that gets in, and I have a feeling he certainly doesn't want more, which would happen if the barrier was lowered. Here's a somewhat recent example:
Probably you are right, though in the case you linked the barrier was clearly insufficient. And OTOH, I have seen many cases where actually sane one-time contributors had to spend unreasonable time changing trivial patches to match the guidelines.
[RFC PATCH] cmdline: Hide "debug" from /proc/cmdline
It has come to our attention that a system running a specific user
space init program will not boot if you add "debug" to the kernel
command line.
Lol. I sometimes get disgusted by the kind of crap people merge, but it's nice that at least this one got the ridicule it deserved.
I really do wonder what it is with Sievers. The handing of udev went into a nosedive after GregKH handed him the maintainership. Yet GregKH seems to trust him completely and Torvalds for some reason trust GregKH.
It really makes me worry about the future of the kernel once Torvalds decides that he has had enough.
Linus occasionally rants about some of the crap that gets in, and I have a feeling he certainly doesn't want more, which would happen if the barrier was lowered. Here's a somewhat recent example:
http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1404.0/01331.html