All you can really do is plow ahead until someone tells you to stop and keep making noise about it. Good noise in the "hey, this is what I just did isn't it neat?" noise. Not "hey, its been two days and nobody's said anything about my FANTASTIC IDEA!" noise. Lower the barrier to the author accepting the idea as much as possible which usually means writing the patch before you get explicit approval.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warnock%27s_Dilemma
