Patch status can be edited through email by project maintainers only. If any other user sends an email with such intention it gets no effect without any feedback about the reason. A system message would be useful to notify users about this.
An additional request was received to extend the change-patch-status-through-email feature to patch submitter. I will handle this also if there are no objections.
Patch sent to the mailing list can be seen at: https://lists.yoctoproject.org/pipermail/yocto/2017-March/035361.html this is implemented for testing in the staging instance: https://patchwork-staging.openembedded.org/
Change pushed to production in commit: 0a48d51f84f3ab14a93cb932b39e1235789c4ae3