I think we're on about the same level, Rob, Gen 2 with a smattering of Gen 1, and I agree with most of the points you make. A couple of observations:

The real time Q&A is tricky, although I have found that using the !tell command to a named individual is handy, once you have made some friends on IRC. Slack works well too. I tend to either review the IRC logs or catch up on Slack and if I see something on which I can maybe help, I dive in.

I also think that the wiki is at different times too verbose and too terse and links, but I have been reluctant to dive in, even though I know all changes are reversible. I wonder how hard it would be to do an alternative beginners version of the important pages, with links back and forth. Very easy, probably. There must be an easy way for one of the gurus to tell us which pages are visited most often.

I'm alone in a big city with no other indiewebbers that I'm aware of, but I try to join the virtual IWC and the people there have been super helpful. You might want to give that a try. Mind you, I have no idea what timezone you are in ... Most likely UK, but possibly not.

As for your final paragraph, all I can do is echo and say Amen.