diff --git a/app-misc/vit/metadata.xml b/app-misc/vit/metadata.xml
index 4bc51f65e31c4..7d18ad052bbcf 100644
--- a/app-misc/vit/metadata.xml
+++ b/app-misc/vit/metadata.xml
@@ -1,10 +1,7 @@
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <!DOCTYPE pkgmetadata SYSTEM "https://www.gentoo.org/dtd/metadata.dtd">
 <pkgmetadata>
-<maintainer type="person">
-  <email>nerdboy@gentoo.org</email>
-  <name>Stephen Arnold</name>
-</maintainer>
+<!-- maintainer-needed -->
 <longdescription lang="en">
   A perl/Curses front end for Taskwarrior (<pkg>app-misc/task</pkg>) that
   provides a fullscreen terminal window with modes and commands
diff --git a/dev-python/pdfrw/metadata.xml b/dev-python/pdfrw/metadata.xml
index 10b88fb21fdb6..b7fec6689be14 100644
--- a/dev-python/pdfrw/metadata.xml
+++ b/dev-python/pdfrw/metadata.xml
@@ -1,10 +1,7 @@
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <!DOCTYPE pkgmetadata SYSTEM "https://www.gentoo.org/dtd/metadata.dtd">
 <pkgmetadata>
-	<maintainer type="person">
-		<email>nerdboy@gentoo.org</email>
-		<name>Steve Arnold</name>
-	</maintainer>
+	<!-- maintainer-needed -->
 	<stabilize-allarches/>
 	<upstream>
 		<remote-id type="pypi">pdfrw</remote-id>
diff --git a/dev-python/smartypants/metadata.xml b/dev-python/smartypants/metadata.xml
index 8e25222ca8f2e..ff0054796bd39 100644
--- a/dev-python/smartypants/metadata.xml
+++ b/dev-python/smartypants/metadata.xml
@@ -1,10 +1,7 @@
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <!DOCTYPE pkgmetadata SYSTEM "https://www.gentoo.org/dtd/metadata.dtd">
 <pkgmetadata>
-	<maintainer type="person">
-		<email>nerdboy@gentoo.org</email>
-		<name>Steve Arnold</name>
-	</maintainer>
+	<!-- maintainer-needed -->
 	<stabilize-allarches/>
 	<longdescription lang="en">
 	smartypants does transformations of plain old ASCII straight quotes,
diff --git a/dev-util/cccc/metadata.xml b/dev-util/cccc/metadata.xml
index fbede6cc7a329..e288ca6f7ed3c 100644
--- a/dev-util/cccc/metadata.xml
+++ b/dev-util/cccc/metadata.xml
@@ -1,9 +1,7 @@
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <!DOCTYPE pkgmetadata SYSTEM "https://www.gentoo.org/dtd/metadata.dtd">
 <pkgmetadata>
-	<maintainer type="person">
-		<email>nerdboy@gentoo.org</email>
-	</maintainer>
+	<!-- maintainer-needed -->
 	<longdescription lang="en">
 		cccc provides source code metrics (line counts, complexity,
 		object-oriented, and structural metrics) for Java and C++
diff --git a/media-gfx/svg2rlg/metadata.xml b/media-gfx/svg2rlg/metadata.xml
index fbf20ae5c3cf0..e7c9ced3cbbff 100644
--- a/media-gfx/svg2rlg/metadata.xml
+++ b/media-gfx/svg2rlg/metadata.xml
@@ -1,10 +1,7 @@
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <!DOCTYPE pkgmetadata SYSTEM "https://www.gentoo.org/dtd/metadata.dtd">
 <pkgmetadata>
-	<maintainer type="person">
-		<email>nerdboy@gentoo.org</email>
-		<name>Steve Arnold</name>
-	</maintainer>
+	<!-- maintainer-needed -->
 	<upstream>
 		<remote-id type="github">sarnold/svg2rlg</remote-id>
 	</upstream>
diff --git a/net-misc/ntpsec/metadata.xml b/net-misc/ntpsec/metadata.xml
index 8eaf794d00158..9d4b63729b27a 100644
--- a/net-misc/ntpsec/metadata.xml
+++ b/net-misc/ntpsec/metadata.xml
@@ -1,10 +1,6 @@
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <!DOCTYPE pkgmetadata SYSTEM "https://www.gentoo.org/dtd/metadata.dtd">
 <pkgmetadata>
-	<maintainer type="person">
-		<email>nerdboy@gentoo.org</email>
-		<name>Stephen L Arnold</name>
-	</maintainer>
 	<maintainer type="person">
 		<email>blueness@gentoo.org</email>
 		<name>Anthony G. Basile</name>
diff --git a/sci-libs/eccodes/metadata.xml b/sci-libs/eccodes/metadata.xml
index 5f5824a4a4673..33ac9fe575eb9 100644
--- a/sci-libs/eccodes/metadata.xml
+++ b/sci-libs/eccodes/metadata.xml
@@ -1,10 +1,7 @@
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <!DOCTYPE pkgmetadata SYSTEM "https://www.gentoo.org/dtd/metadata.dtd">
 <pkgmetadata>
-<maintainer type="person">
-	<email>nerdboy@gentoo.org</email>
-	<name>Steve Arnold</name>
-</maintainer>
+<!-- maintainer-needed -->
 <longdescription lang="en">
 	This is the new open source BUFR/GRIB library (from ECMWF)
 	supporting C, F90, and Python interfaces.
diff --git a/sci-libs/libbufr/metadata.xml b/sci-libs/libbufr/metadata.xml
index f42bb0348a977..17252cf7e7b1a 100644
--- a/sci-libs/libbufr/metadata.xml
+++ b/sci-libs/libbufr/metadata.xml
@@ -1,9 +1,7 @@
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <!DOCTYPE pkgmetadata SYSTEM "https://www.gentoo.org/dtd/metadata.dtd">
 <pkgmetadata>
-	<maintainer type="person">
-		<email>nerdboy@gentoo.org</email>
-	</maintainer>
+	<!-- maintainer-needed -->
 	<longdescription lang="en">
 		This is the only useable open source BUFR library (from ECMWF) 
 		and comes with a few example tools (some of which are built