There are multiple posts here speaking about improvements for rivers, ranging from differing widths and biomes, all the way to new blocks. This is not what I am proposing. Rivers in Minecraft have multiple major issues that need to be addressed.

Rivers are frequently cut off by terrain.

There are countless examples of the terrain surrounding a river raising higher than the water level, resulting in said river leaving existence and then returning on the other side. This is an example of one that I found that is cut off in a roofed forest.

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The Xs mark cutoffs (obviously)

Rivers should be given priority, not the surrounding land. Rivers should cut through terrain, allowing the water to flow properly, as a river should. This would greatly expand the usefulness of boats in Minecraft, as journeys would no longer be interrupted by land blocking the water in the river biome.

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Another river cut off.

As you can see, this is still a river biome. Why then should the game not give it the dignity it deserves, and actually put a river there?

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I cannot adequately stress how common this is.

Rivers overflow.

Not sure what I'm talking about? This.

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This has been under our noses for a decade.

This is not a lake biome. This is an example of the exact opposite phenomenon listed above, where the surrounding terrain gets lower than banks of the river, resulting in vast stretches of one or two block flooding of forests. These two rivers have resulted in hundreds of blocks being completely useless for gameplay. As players, we've gotten so used to this world generation that we've never stopped to question it. If this were to be added in a more controlled way, such as wider rivers or some sort of forest-bog biome, it would feel much more polished and not so broken.

Rivers never seem to end.

For every river I've passed, I have never found one that actually comes to an end at some point. Not as pressing of an issue, but this is rather unrealistic. By no means does a dedicated source have to be created, but at some point, they should simply come to a close. From what I've seen, river biomes will only end if they come into contact with an ocean variant biome.

Some rivers weirdly hug coastlines.

This is a coastline I found today, while checking out the new update. The outlined area is one single river biome, ending and starting at the same ocean.

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This shouldn't exist.

Rivers don't always end where they should.

This river cuts into an ocean and then back into land, like a less extreme example of the picture above. Two rivers having openings near each other is not inherently a bad thing, but the fact that this is the same river is an issue. It should be much rarer than it currently is.

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Same river.

This is not a feature request. This is a plea to Mojang, to fix many long-existing bugs in Minecraft's generation. They lower the natural beauty of the game, and need to be patched. Should these issues be resolved, especially the overwhelming number of cut off rivers, not only will the natural beauty of the game and our maps be improved, but overall gameplay will be as well, because our rivers will finally be properly traversable by boat.

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Tldr; Rivers get cut off and generate strangely in many places, and this should be fixed.