Because there is no easy way to determine if they actually blocked hundreds of bad ideas.

I think being qualified as a jerk or not is orthogonal to the need of gatekeeping (required in my opinion) or the quantities (higher for more popular).

Perhaps you're not seeing because those never existed? I mean, even though you're clearly speaking in hypotheticals, you're fabricating an outlandish scenario where somehow you associate being a jerk with a 100s-to-1 success rate. But there is nothing to support or even suggest that's even remotely real, plausible, or even conceivable. You have only concrete evidence of someone rejecting a sound recommendation on the grounds of gatekeeping mixed with NIH. Gatekeeping and NIH are not quality gates, are they? If that is the process, obviously you cannot expect a positive outcome.