Mechanically speaking I think the questions have been answered as above. Sir Charles Ross, quite apart from his ego, would not have wished to admit any liability by publicly acknowledging a fault in the design, but the extractor slot was changed before WWI and the pinning of the bolt sleeves made it foolproof I believe.

Some soldiers naturally try to strip their weapons down farther than they are told to, and in the conditions of WWI it's not surprising they did, and having done so, some unfortunately didn't get them back together correctly and then didn't notice the locking problem. That could have been addressed by training, but the issue and the solution was apparently not much understood or not widely known at the time.

For example, oiling the ammo would have solved the extraction issues and the Mk.III was plenty strong enough to stand the resulting lack of case adhesion - but the command structure didn't understand that. (Not that oiling ammo isn't without problems, but at least not extraction problems!)
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