From an outside (Elixir slack,irc) perspective sometimes I think these communities on Slack or IRC are "hiding" things from a beginner or at least making the search for an answer harder: because they are not indexed and when one searches for an answer one does not receive a link to a Slack conversation about that topic.

Personal example: I started to learn Elixir, but I don't know where are these communities. So I rely on SO or other open sources/articles on the web.