My opinion. As a user of the site, I am entitled to one, yes?

Of course. We both. And all others.

Once again I'll say that I'm using your willingness to debate rationally and calmly, as a proxy for the keepers of the status quo. Ie. For "your opinion" (because I'm talking to you), read "the opinions of those few guardians of the sources".

It becomes verbose, laborious and tiresome to try and phrase such discussion without using the personal pronoun; and confusing as hell to try and use 'they', 'them' or 'their' when replying to one signatory.

If this place was the whole of the Internet -- as AOL tried to be, back in 1993

I acknowledged quite clearly above that there would have to be limits: I suggested programming-related; with additional, specified proscriptions.

My Javascript question arose whilst writing a simple piece of user interface code that allows me to present and interact with graphics constructed by a Perl backend.

I (breifly) tried writing the whole thing is JS; but my distaste for JS; plus its inherent limitations with respect to accessing the local filesystem amongst others; meant I rapidly longed to be back into Perl.

So my current direction is to do the bulk of the processing, including the generation of the images that are the final output, in Perl, and then throw them into the browser for display.

To control what is generated by the back end, I want to use some simple controls in the browser to feed options back to the perl script. And that requires small amounts of Javascript.

So there is a link to Perl; but it is very tenuous. However, given the high proportion of Web Monk's for who JS + Perl is their daily bread&butter; I can think of no place I could go to get better answers from people I have a clear idea of their abilities than to ask them here.

Ditto: for many of my math/statistics and other questions. I've tried math forums in the past, but the answers are always couched in terms that make sense to other mathematicians but not so much to programmers. On the other hand, the answers I get here are generally ones that get me directly to a solution.

And both the OP and much of the pro sentiment in this thread has reflected that simple desire: to have permission to draw on the experience of those other regulars here who's skills extend beyond Perl. And do so without incurring the ire or imposing upon those who aren't interested.

As much as anything else; the desire to have an off-topic section is about respecting the wishes of those others who don't want to disturb by these 'other subjects'; whilst benefiting from the strengths of this place.

I'll admit that I am baffled by the resistance to allow others to utilise this place in that way.

that doesn't mean it has to be your sandbox for every purpose you can imagine.

Talking of Straw men.

I say it again. I didn't start the thread; nor did I have any involvement in the post & thread that inspired it.

I simply supported the call, and tried to provide reasoned argument in support of it.

I can see now I had it right in my first post in this thread.