No it's not. Someone who is a former core maintainer likely has better perspective on what belongs or doesn't than 99% of the community. There's a reason most stdlib and language decisions in Go are run through an extremely small cabal of people.

I think what OP is trying to say is that the merit of a given feature alone should determine whether it goes into the stdlib or not and author's reputation should not result in something being merged that wouldn't otherwise.

Of course it should have merit, and it does. I invoked the author's reputation in that he previously had both contributed and determined merit -- his opinion carries far more weight than any random gopher.