Actually many people here on meta are also contributors to Discourse, which is a collective work created not only by the small “core team” (for lack of a better term) of volunteers paid to work on Discourse, but also by the ideas, discussion, and code from hundreds (at least 215) of others of volunteers. While clearly some have contributed more than others, they are all co-creators and co-builders of Discourse.
Agreed that the listening is good here, but most large open source projects do not use (or at least try to avoid) a two-class system of contributors as it relates to communication and development. 
There are many more examples you might want to study.