> You could argue that the web-based issue trackers are more fancy. But
> this is the problem: they are web-based.
It's not that they are more fancy (though they are), they are more
familiar to a lot of people. So they lower the barrier for
participation, in a lot of ways.
Also because you can contribute/report a bug while you are in your browser just looking at an API makes it very tempting to do so.
For example I have fixed lots of typos in various projects just because the "Edit in a fork" button was there while I browsed the code curiously. I would never even have looked at the code if I had to clone it first, let alone create a patch if it requires me to register to a mailing list.
Kind regards,
Philippe