Recently when a question about Racket went unanswered I resorted to the Racket user mailing list and received exceptional advice. The #python IRC channel is unbeatable for help debugging small snippets (of the kind and size you'd normally put in a StackOverflow post), and the Elixir Forums are just fantastic - they go to great lengths as a community.
The support you'll get in those kinds of places is almost always better than the answers you'd receive on StackOverflow, but the downside is the inconvenience of decentralization. Take Racket for example - the user mailing list is by far the best resource for questions, but how would you know that? There is also an /r/racket subreddit, a [racket] StackOverflow tag, and a (pretty dead) official #racket IRC channel on Freenode. A user is as (if not more) likely to check those places before even thinking to hit the mailing list.
I myself had a StackOverflow post closed recently, but I don't think it's so dramatic. And some tags are certainly better than others. Asking a question on [react] will lead to a flood of poorly written answers from people seeking quick points, for example. [asm] on the other hand has Peter Cordes, who is like a code angel and veritable blessing to all of Hacker Kind.