> I, personally, can make a judgement about both of things better with a patch that I apply locally than with a PR.

How come? How is a text .patch file easier in this regard than a UI for essentially that same .patch? Can't you check out the PR in the same way you would 'apply' a patch to review it?

For what it's worth, you can just add .patch onto the end of a github PR URL to get that.