Back in the wii home brew days, I used to hang around in their irc channels. Those channels were a main way for people to get help with what we would now call "jailbreaking" their wii. Sure some sites and forums existed with instructions, but if you ran into a weird edge case or just misunderstood what some kid wrote on a forum you'd be stuck till you found how to get on irc and asked in those channels. During the peak of that scene's activity, once you get in there you would have top notch support from several volunteers handholding you though every step of the way. The actual people who wrote the tools you were having problems with would help you out. Sometimes they'd give you a debug version comoiled just for you. Often, your bug would get fixed and a new point release made while you wait. The people writing guides would camp out in there and take note of the most common questions their guides cause and go fix them to head off problems early.

To me, forums felt like a place information went to die. Your answer would be on page 5 of a 30 page rambling thread but you wouldn't ever know because you wouldn't read that far. Read page one and maybe two, then jump to the end to see if it's solved and instead they are on another topic entirely.

IRC meanwhile was always 100% relevant and timely.