In reply to Armin.

Brid.gy, which is a project of Ryan Barrett, pulls comments, likes, and such from various networks back to your site. It basically converts them into webmentions. It is a great example of how posting on your own site doesn't mean you have to be cut off from others.

But being a programmer is not required to be of help. One of the comments we often have is that someone new trying the plugins doesn't understand what they are supposed to do. Helping someone by answering questions, writing a blog post about how to use them...even submitting feature and documentation suggestions helps too.