Which tree to track: linux-next or staging?

Hi I have had the opportunity to submit a few patches, which has been really fun. However, a while back i submitted patches for fixes that i realised after had already been patched in GregKH tree ... and i realised i had been developing against Linus's master branch, and not linux-next. But my question is, is it better to develop against linux-next or in newbies cases, one of GregKH's (staging) branches? Maybe staging/master or staging/staging-next? If you develop against linux-next, dont you run a pretty big chance of someone submitting to one of Greg's staging drivers prior to the merge into linux-next, since patches go to drivers/staging seemingly a lot more frequently than the merges into linux-next? Thanks in advance Cheers Jon