Have you ever been scared or hesitant about reporting flaws or bugs to a community with a strong staunch fanbase ??
Obviously there are different ways of reporting and starting discussions, but I brought up the courage to report a flaw on a subreddit (not to be named) that I knew is very sensitive to criticisme, and I was flooded with downvotes and even was subject to gaslighting, so I gave up on that software and became even more hesitant about reporting problems on other FOSS communities .
Is this mindset very prevalent among all open source communities? have you faced something similar ?
With open source it is “community software”, and if this aspect of it is strong then the line between users and developers can be blurred somewhat, ordinary users may feel attached in a similar way as developers, so @Rentlar@beehaw.org’s suggestions could still apply for getting a better response from the community.
Some communities also have to deal with a lot of demanding, entitled people (which I’m not labelling you as) and so may have set the defensive threshold a little high, and so coming across as being constructive about the project goes a long way.