[neves]

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.

[dean177]

That seems a little bit extreme, why not just open the issue?

[y4mi]

that issue becomes part of public history.

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.

[cerberusss]

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.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

[reitanqild]

Agree. That's probably one of tje reasons why HN is so interesting:

Requiring everyone to sign in with full, verified name limits what people can talk about.

In fact I'd almost recommend against commenting online on anything using your full name.