I've been using IRC to ask questions instead of Stack Overflow for some time now. Each room has its own character, but I've found people are generally very helpful.
It depends, I suppose. The last time I used IRC in a technical help channel, someone asked for a simple way to open a bare X screen. I gave the answer I knew, which I got from a mandrake system script. It has worked for me for years on Debian and Ubuntu:
xinit -- /usr/bin/X :1
And right away, a group of 3-4 clueless people or trolls told the asker that I was attempting to harm their system and not to listen to me. It wasn't very productive or fun.
