IRC channels and mailing list are excellent for informal questioning about a project. You can search for guidance, see if a feature would be well received, and receive a green light before starting to implement something.
Other day I thought about contributing to Yarn, the Javascript package manager, but the only way that I found to communicate with the developers were issues in GitHub. Since I didn't know if the feature I wanted would be well received, I just quit.
i'm not the parent, but that is the main reason i try to abstain from posting on public forums unless its under a pseudonym, which my github account isn't.
I'm not trying to say that my anonymity is guaranteed with irc, its just unlikely that future employers and similar link it to me.
Have a look at Firefox Multi-Account Containers. You can open a tab that has a different color, and it uses a different cookie database. Very useful, because you can create an extra Github account and quickly switch between those accounts.
