Some extension commits go past Gerrit code review. This means that it is impossible to even get notifications on those extensions. Some of those extensions are in use at translatewiki.net and given the numerous breakages related to those extensions lately, I am seriously considering removing those extensions from translatewiki.net until this issue is solved. That is bye bye to maps showing our registered translators around the world.
I think that having commits to extensions unreviewed is a good thing for their maintainers. Auto-approval looks like a workaround.
I have a question here since I am not sure I fully understand the problem: how are you getting notifications that i18n files have changed?
From gerrit or git? I think it should be the latter (some git hook).
//Saper