Sure you can contribute tertially in the same way that happy users of open source projects contribute by attracting more happy users — except for the fact that

Sure you can contribute tertially in the same way that happy users of open source projects contribute by attracting more happy users — except for the fact that more happy users is not an unqualified improvement — which happens to be the subject of petewailes' complaint! My main point is that if you're not posting and getting feedback, your conception of the community is completely untested conjecture.