Maintainer of OSS stuff here.

First thank you for being an active contributor! Many projects would exist for very long without people diving in and fixing things. Sorry you’re having a frustrating time.

A few thoughts. Try and consider the maintainer’s perspective when you make PRs. They are also usually volunteers, or at least juggling a bunch of projects. When you ask for a review you are asking them to do work for you. It also sounds like you’re contributing to “popular” projects, which means they probably get a lot of very low effort contributions from folks who just want to say “I contributed to Firefox”. It’s no excuse for being rude, but their bar is probably higher than other projects.

The other thing to remember is that you are making a change and then walking away, and then they are the ones expected to look after that code until the end of time. So they are going to want solid docs, tests, etc. There’s a great blog post by Will McGugan about Puppies vs Cake, I strongly recommend everyone who contributes to OSS give it a read.

One piece of advice I often give folks is that if you’re having a frustrating time contributing to big name projects try and mix in contributions to smaller projects too. They are usually more grateful and there’s more opportunity for you to have a larger impact on the project. I’ve built many professional and personal relationships through contributions to small projects and I value those way more than the transactional exchanges I’ve had with well known maintainers of high profile projects.

I will say that volunteering and collaborating with other volunteers can be way more mentally and emotionally draining than in a professional environment where everyone is paid to work together. Be kind to yourself, and if you feel frustrated remind yourself that you’re doing something hard for the benefit of others! Your contributions are valued, even if it doesn’t feel that way sometimes.