Agreed. You basically get paid in reputation, trustworthiness, and maybe even beer/brownie/pizza points.

I also think that public interactions offer a preview of how easy (or difficult) it will be to work with someone on a project... we're not experts on every domain of knowledge, so the best bet is to approach interactions with a bit of humility and respect.

If this were an AITA reddit thread, ESH (a little bit).