We need to do a better job of onboarding new contributors and transitioning users into contributors

Similar to SFaulken, I think a lot could be done in terms of onboarding, documentation and communication.
openSUSE has a lot of great and unique tools and operates in a way that makes it comparatively easy to contribute. But the how to get there is often not very accessible/obvious or very technical.

Get rid of patterns, or make them more of an optional choice

I moved from arch (used about 2 years) to tumbleweed yesterday. I have to agree with what you said. also the lack of needed packages is a pain in the ass for me ATM, I’m jumping through a lot of hoops like flatpak and distrobox to get some of my apps working. also the documentations are kinda lacking. for example I didn’t know in tumbleweed you have to do zypper dup because it’s stated in an obscure place in the docs.