Indeed Perl Monks is for discussing Perl with other persons sharing with you an interest for Perl. I don't see anything wrong with occasional discussing OT subjects with people sharing with you an interest both for Perl and for something else, especially if you can, say, draw some analogy between them or the like, whereas those "@{[(q(many))x4]}" other places you mention have nothing to do with Perl, and I have absolutely no interest in a (generic or specialized) friend finder service whatsoever.

So it's not about discussing "non Perl issues", but about discussing "non strictly Perl issues". I expand more on the subject in my reply to Perl Mouse's one.

Whatever, I must admit I mixed here two questions which are actually only loosely coupled, one of them being the one you've focused on, whereas the other regards the possibility of replying to home nodes, which is not certainly a total heresy, since

• it was once present,
• many monks including saints expressed a positive opinion.

Personally, I see the risk in allowing replies to arbitrary homenodes, but no peril as far as this was limited to one's own homenode only.