I wish developers--new and old alike--pay attention to the commit messages that goes into the kernel. Granted, it takes a subject matter expert to really understand what's being said, but the general format and layout of commit messages is instructive. Commit messages helps the reader/reviewer get their bearings; they also help to build the case from the bottom up.
The fact that the development team is globally distributed both necessitates this kind of knowledge serialization and preserves it for posterity. It's completely different from tapping a colleague sitting next you on the shoulder, and saying "psst, can you approve this quick? It's just a bunch of fixes".
