He answered it, he linked to gitter because he assumed people wanted a social link instead.

He's not dodging the question at all, he answered it directly. He obviously likes gitter and chatting with others.

He's obviously a shill for big chatroom

Presumably, they prefer to learn by talking to people rather than browsing repos.

The .NET community was, until recently, decidedly not-open-source, so the learning workflow of "open the repo, read the readme, browse the code" might be a new thing for them.

Losen up, linking to something may be subjective. If it's not correct, HN mods can change the URL ;)

Perhaps it's not a bad idea for widening the community ( linking to gitter). I'm actually wondering if they ever used jabber, a not-well-known community for chatting about .net

I don't see that response as dodging anything. He did answer the question - he think that chatting is a decent way for newbies to learn.

You or I may not fully agree, but this is subjective. And it's an answer, even if it might not satisfy you!