I really wish IRC was still the defecto choice for open source projects. Now days all I see is gitter/slack/discord/matrix which I find all have a significantly worse experience than IRC.
If IRC was stateful (ie, it would "remember"/deliver offline messages when I sign-on again (at least buffer them for some configurable period)), I'd be onboard with using it for almost everything
But it's not
That's what made Slack so appealing early on - IRC-like communication with history
Maybe you know already, but you can use an IRC relay to act as pseudo client, connect to that and then read back on messages. You’ll have to find a place to host it though.
For example, “The Lounge”.
That's the opposite of my experience even to this day. As long as you follow question asking etiquette (do research before you ask, don't ask to ask, explain what you've tried so far, etc), people are usually good at answering questions when they can.
Funnily enough your comment describes SO just the same. How many people complaining about SO here have really just asked poor questions, hadn't explained what they tried, didn't do enough research first to ask a good question, etc.