That's why I say that this is a management problem. If there's a big project that isn't making progress and this big project is holding up the development of the whole game then that's a call for focus and resources to be shifted from adding more minor content (which is already piled up so high and bottlenecks quickly since there aren't more people sorting through it). Yes, it may mean a few months with little to show, but at this point Fenoxo has well established that he's not going to flake out and disappear with everyone's money (and if some temp coders are brought in to get this project done the volunteers can even work on getting some content coded in so it's not a stall-out). There's enough good faith here that if Fenoxo said he wanted to make a big push to get this out and that other content would slow down in the meantime most of those backing it would understand - or show some excitement, even.
As for reviewers saying it can't be addressed is just untrue. Guidelines could be set down, a process could be codified, the whole thing could be streamlined so that Fenoxo himself is just double-checking rather than doing the bulk of that work himself. Content backs up precisely because it's hard to say what will get approved, why, and in what order anything is going to be looked at or implemented. Letting all of this stay messy and vague is why it comes down to, as you say, an issue of people not having enough time. It takes too much time and individuals have to do too much because the process still has so many "I'll do this when I get to it" aspects. Doing more with less isn't a bad approach but it's one that only works when everything is running smoothly - that is when everyone knows exactly what to do, every step has more than one person who can move it along, and the process as a whole isn't dependent on one particular person having to pop in at each step to do a significant amount of the work before it can move on to the next.
I couldn't say why that is, I'm not privvy to that sort of information, but based on how it works now it looks as though Fenoxo doesn't trust anyone else to do the work of approving content. That in itself is a type of management issue; bosses need to be able to delegate.
And just to clarify that last part: when you've worked on enough projects there are certain signs that stick out. Too many cooks is one sign of poor management but the opposite - one or more people wearing too many hats - is another. For a project of this size the basic staff would be a head writer (who, in addition to doing the actual writing, lays down the guidelines for all other writers to follow), a head editor (who enforces the standards and guidelines of the head writer, leads the approval process, organizes the content for the coders, and directs any additional editors on what they should be looking for/at), a head coder (who lays down the framework, does the heavy lifting for the game systems, and assigns tasks to any additional coders), and a project lead (who makes sure everyone is on task, sets the tasks, does final approvals - all the organizational work).
With TiTS Fenoxo is doing many of these things himself. When that happens it's almost always an issue of either extreme disorganization (no one else can help out because only the boss knows the plan and the boss doesn't share much) or a trust issue; the boss does so many things himself because the boss doesn't think anyone else can do it the way he wants it done. Being the head writer, editor, -and- project lead is already stretching one person far too thin.
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