I dunno, I added a major feature to a project I had never interacted with before because I needed the functionality at work. I even used AI to help me (and spent a lot of time cleaning it up, as I didn't want to submit something shameful, but I needed the AI to implement a particular section that was on the edge of my understanding).

The code got accepted and is now released.

I imagine if the project maintainers were curmudgeons like OP, the rest of the community would never benefit from the work I did, and I'd have to keep it as an internal fork.

Am I really that exceptional, where these contributors can count on 1 hand the number of times people like me contributed something useful? I guess it probably depends on the project.