If I couldn't personally take the heat, I sure wouldn't hang around here.
But I sympathize with somebody who wouldn't post because they were unhappy with off-topic tangents.
The tangents to which I object strongly are the ones where somebody jumps in and recommends their favorite controller when the question was not about product selection or comparison. I have never done that and I don't think much of the guys who do it regularly.
A long time ago, in the early years, there was a forum and listserv over at Control.Com. It has been obsoleted by Vbulletin and other live-action forums like this one, but really its demise came from one guy named Curt Wuollet.
Curt couldn't control himself.
Every post that had to do with Windows, or A-B , or anything else with more than a fraction of a percent of market share he would be the first reply. "Use Linux". "Linux wouldn't have that problem." "If you used Linux, you could just rewrite that part of the kernel yourself." "Everything about Linux is free; why do you pay for that Windows-based software?".
I gave up on that forum because I couldn't get anything done; if I tried to give somebody a tutorial or technical help, there would be Curt, telling them that Linux would come down from the clouds and save us all. He once called me "stupid and scared" to my face because I work for Allen-Bradley.
I have, quite a few times, refrained from entering a discussion because I knew the issue was complex enough that I'd be set upon by howls of "yeah, A-B is too hard to use". This Forum shouldn't be like the White House Press Office.
So, Mr. Private Message, go ahead and post openly, and try to remember that it's just dots, on a screen.