Ask HN: Where are the secret helpful communities of coders hiding?

Hopefully my question isn't too vague. Back when I first started, it would be easy to get a hand on a forum or some sort of message board. Granted, that could take some time. In other cases, IRC was nice too because people would actually help. Now it seems like the times have changed and finding an actually helpful community is hard. Where is everyone hiding? I feel like I get bashed on IRC more than I do to get help because I don't know this or that. All I want to do is learn and meet some like minded coders online, just like in the old days. Is that too much to ask? Are there any great, active message boards or google groups? Any IRC servers besides freenode that you may know about?