I recall one moment in IRC when someone submitted a patch to a much-wanted bug, there was massive cheering, and the dev said wistfully that this was why he was wanting to submit patches here and not at the day job, because while the day job paid, it did not provide a cheering squad, much less a genuinely enthusiastic one, and as much as he hated to depart, his dayjob beckoned. (And then I pointed at *that* and hailed non-dev channel denizens and reminded them that their contribution of hanging out and cheering was indeed a valuable contribution with real benefits.)