You'd be wrong. I know plenty of maintainers (however you spell it), including myself, who accept help for people they don't know. All that matters is that they do good work or send in good patches.

The modules that most people use regularly are already the modules that get a lot of attention and don't need that much help. If someone wants to work on their Perl chops, choosing a neglected module is a pretty safe and effective way to do it.