Facebook seems hit or miss - some Facebook groups are okay with beginners, others hate them.
Twitter is prone to the no-network effect where you can only really ask questions if you have a strong follower base that's open to answering your questions - nobody really uses hashtags, so, you have to be a "reply guy" if you want to ask questions.
Reddit is nice, but I was banned from Reddit for life for saying that the new Harry Potter game looks good and probably isn't a call to arms for Nazis - trying to be a voice of reason, rather than a Nazi, or, whatever I got banned from the platform for life for - and haven't bothered setting up Tor yet.
Quora seems interesting, but, I don't like it.
Hacker News seems great, but, it's more for intermediate to advanced audiences.
Stack Exchange seems great, but, it's not a great place for beginners - like Hacker News, it seems more well-suited to intermediate to advanced audiences, or, people who can articulate beginner level questions in a way that's non-offensive to more experienced users.
Slack and Discord are probably the most beginner-friendly in my opinion, but only if you either ask very, very, very short questions in the right channels.
Are there any other websites these days that I should be looking at?
I'm looking to learn more about different things as a beginner, since, shamefully, I don't know everything about everything that has ever existed, or will ever exist, but, find that if you want to learn more about something, you need to be an intermediate to advanced-level practitioner first.
I've found that on entertainment-focused websites like Facebook and Twitter I'll get insults and zingers back rather than helpful information if there's any way that my question can be deliberately misinterpreted to make the asker of a given question look bad (i.e. for the lulz).
For example, yesterday I asked if the clothes you wear while riding a bicycle at 20-30kph matter in terms of aerodynamic resistance and most people "laughed" at me for not knowing that air exists, that drag exists, for not being able to solve my question with pen and paper and basic high school math, etc.
Is there any website on the Internet in 2023 where you can ask questions as a beginner, or as someone who doesn't have hundreds to thousands of hours of experience in a given field without getting "owned" and made a mockery of?
Or, is there a more pragmatic, righteous path?
If so, what is the righteous path to asking questions as a beginner - a non-expert in a given area - in 2023?
