One of the common things that is said in the open source community is, "if you run into a problem, open an issue on it, don't just complain" with the implication that it is not ok to complain about whatever it is you ran into.

There's so much wrong with that mindset.

Just one concrete example of how it is wrong is that there's so much under-documented confusing bad weird crap involved in even e.g. just getting set up with Flow + Browserify that while I am already getting nowhere fast, I would bet getting nowhere fast ten times slower if I also attempted to open and follow an issue on every freaking thing that I come across along the way.

I am not entirely against using issues. However, I believe that in a good ecosystem it is part of a bigger gestalt of good UX. Using issues is just one tool among many and really should be a last resort. If there are issues being opened, it often indicates more fundamental problems e.g. poor documentation or a poor design or a poor ecosystem in the first place.