Quote Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
2) People don't want to answer questions this way. This one is hard to explain, though I have theories. I would theorize that a question asked in a PM is more of a demand than a request. Either you have to answer the person, or you have to ignore them. Most people are brought up to believe it is rude to ignore people, so there is a certain leverage to a PM that some don't enjoy.
I have three reasons for not responding to questions sent via PM:

1. You are restricting yourself to only one person in terms of a possible answer. If you keep your questions on the open forum, all sorts of people will view it, and someone else may have something to contribute.

2. Someone else could be having the same problem, and could benefit by what happens in your question post.

3. In days and weeks to come, someone may have the same issue, and do a forum search to see if the question has been asked before, and if so, what was the answer. If everything is confined to a PM/Email, they won't find anything.