In the chart of [2], it would be nice if a ticket could advance at least up to the point of "Test" (i.e. ready to be screened, and a patch accepted or rejected), without having to be touched by someone who is a screener or in Clojure/core.
The current flow seems to require a Clojure/core member to touch a ticket twice to get it to "Test": once to Vet the ticket, and once to mark it as "Test" after a contributor has added a patch (or three times if it was Vetted in Backlog). Why? Because the Approval setting of a ticket is only supposed to be changed by a Clojure/core member (even though it appears that JIRA doesn't stop others from changing it). That sounds like busy-work, but I may be missing of the reasons for the current flow's structure.
I don't know if the auto-generated chart of Chas's proposed flow at [3] is up to date, but if so, I've added another easier-to-read figure that should be equivalent to it on that same page. His auto-generated chart does not explicitly state who can make which state changes, but I've added my guess/proposal to that chart.
Notice how it is like a funnel. Anyone can create a ticket. Anyone contributor can get it to the point of "Ready to Screen" (corresponding roughly to "Test" in the diagram at [2]). Only then does it require one of the few, the brave, the Marines --- uh, I mean the screeners, to advance it further. And if the issue is real and the patch is good, they only need to touch it once to get it to Rich.