I think you've got the right idea. This is still a young community and it's growing rapidly. There's a lot of chaos that comes with that, and a lot of short term opportunity both for productive and destructive activity. If we manage to sufficiently encourage the productive and discourage the destructive/parasitic, then there could be sustainable opportunity long term as well. Keep focusing on brightening and enlightening the lives of those around you here and I think you'll do fine.

As for advice beyond that, I'd encourage newcomers to jump into comment threads and discussions. A lot of people seem to assume that productive conversation between people of conflicting views can't happen on the internet, but in my experience they're pretty common here. I think part of it may be the presence of more explicit incentives for behaving productively and respectably.