Please calm down.
The article that @bascule links is still part of the official, current, documentation (linked from https://central.sonatype.org/pages/ossrh-guide.html as "Why the wait?"). So its publishing date is not that important.
The ticket you link is for claiming a subpath of com.github., where the author only has to proof that they are indeed under control of the account.
Your anecdotal evidence may differ, but sonatype still documents what @bascule describes and has experienced, so dismissing their evidence as "anecdotal" is unfair, as they have experienced the documented process.