I know I'm a PvE player, I drop into these conversations 'cause they're full of good advice.
When I started this game, I googled up for private groups, asked around, and joined mobius because I knew what sort of things happen in competitive, open-world games with always-on PvP. (the first such game where I could get online to play with strangers was the original Diablo, where a high-level player on the list presented a very real chance of murdering you just for being there)
Funnily enough, it's talking to PvPers that's given me the confidence to fly in open. Talking to other PvEers would spell open out as some anarchic wasteland where the instant you drift out the mailslot you'll get ganked by some swarm of stealth instakill ferdelances, and then when I finally got brave enough to log into open one time... crickets chirping
Sure, I swap to solo/private when I just don't feel like dealing with people, like the other day when I was jiggling my modules around to make use of the extra slots we all just got, which meant doing a bunch of runs in and out of Jameson's Memorial, but it was very much PvPers that convinced me that the stories of roaming gank squads are greatly exaggerated.
In all honesty it's not the good PvPers that I'm particularly worried about - they've got bigger fish to fry than someone like me unless there's something happening that gives them the need to prove a point, and at the very least they tend to be entertaining about it. It's the mediocre PvPers that tend to be the biggest threat to newbies and PvE-fit players under most circumstances. I bring up SS13 a lot as examples of griefers - a fairly common scrub-tier trick is for someone to log in and grab a fuel tank and beeline for the bar with the intent of blowing it up, or they'll just run up and wordlessly hit someone with a fire extinguisher, then they get banned and the sentiment is a general "wow, that was annoying, oh well". It's the creative griefers that provide the "I'm not even mad, that's amazing" moments.