Absolutely. A lot of the time the biggest difficulty with researching something is not even knowing the right terms to search for. Asking a few questions can give you a starting point to know where and how to look.
And the thing is, I personally hate asking questions on forums and the like. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've done it. I'm very good at digging up answers by myself, and I generally do work better with essays than I do with conversations. But my experience should not be seen as the default, and people shouldn't be shit on for trying to learn through community rather than through textbooks.
More importantly, why is the gay room so small? You can barely get any gay in there.