Confused about the "ask before sending a DM" rule.

[regal rock]

I want to reach out to the creator of the Voxel Tools module, but as #rules says, I would have to ask before sending a DM. What confuses me is the rule to not "ping specific people (unless you're answering, or been clearly given permission)" under getting help. There's is also another rule about not asking to ask. So with that in mind how would I be allowed to DM the person?

[gusty junco]

Let's clear this from the bottom up:

There's is also another rule about not asking to ask
This is about stuff like "Can I ask a question here?". Like, that's what the server is for, so there is no need to first ask. But asking to DM is a specific question to a specific user, that is ok.

Don't ping specific people (unless you're answering, or been clearly given permission)
In this context it seems ok to ping. What we don't want is random pings. We had people just ping a random user to ask for help. That's absolutely not ok and annoying. But pinging someone in the context of a conversation is ok.

I would have to ask before sending a DM
Keep in mind that many people don't like DMs from random people on the internet and tend to keep them open for friends only. That's why we don't allow randomly DMing people without them indicating that it is ok. Some people for example have "DMs welcome" in their profile information, in which case it's fine.
As for the creator of voxel tools, you may also want to check if they are on GitHub. Usually projects explain there how to get help, which could be a dedicated discord server or GitHub issues for example.