everytime I see a project using google groups, i think it is already dead. Gladly yours seems to be used quite often. At least you can search it even years later, compared to an irc or slack channel.
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.
