HN user
Professional mathematician here. Jin's description is spot on. Each repetition of the cycle he describes above feels like you're able to see things in progressively higher resolution. Then one day you wake up and realize you're now an expert.
Citations are the wrong metric. The correct metric to care about is human comfort.
Groundbreaking advances are usually giant leaps, and it takes time for researchers to get comfortable with them. It is in precisely this sense that the numerous contributions of the masses are useful, because their joint combination allows future geniuses to more readily accept these advances, hence giving them more "brain space" to pursue new advances.
One influential paper does not constitute an accepted theory. You need redundancy in your system. Each paper of the masses produces yet another brick for the metaphorical building.