Yes, this. I never really fell into the community aspect of forums but I gained a ton from the community existing. People were helping others and I could find it later.

Early 00s, when I was managing my own dedicated servers, never even read a book about it, but when I searched I’d find tutorial sites, forums where people talked shop/Q&A, the expert sex change site, blogs, the docs, etc. Now when I search something similar it’s pretty much ads and stack overflow. SO is good but at times I don’t like how it’s so strictly Q&A with no room to ask for opinions or to debate pros/cons on a lot of topics. I could probably do that on Reddit but I’ve long learned to just live without that.