How to you experience social interactions in open source?

[filsatoss]

Hi everybody,

I am new to open source, but I like coding and working on projects with people, so I am very excited about it. I am fascinated by the philosophy of openess, collaboration and sharing, but I read a lot of articles and blogs from people mentioning a lack of social norms and respect in open source development. They also mentioned problems with unthankful users, driving developers away (and crazy). 

I am aware, that most of you are probably very busy working on some really cool stuff (and hopefully not dealing with the above listed kind of problems) but it would be amazing if you could leave some short (or more thourough) comments on what you think about it and if you have ever encountered any of those problems yourself.

Thank you very much