Many questions state that ShareLaTeX or Overleaf is used. This often causes or complicates the problem or invalidates/complicates answers, e.g., with installing packages, version problems, using ConTeXt, shell escape, latexmk/arara, debugging, data synchronization and remote data, etc. Such issues could be (partially) resolved by using a local installation (TeX Live/MiKTeX/MacTeX and such).
I am often tempted to leave a comment saying 'install something proper locally and come back if the problem persists'. However, as always we should refrain from imposing habits onto users (see also Is LyX an editor which should be recommended? where the consensus is not to discourage LyX even though it has clear limitations). Moreover, there are good reasons to use an online environment (collaboration with others, lack of permissions to install things locally, preference for being device independent, preference for having a ready-to-use environment). Yet I feel that questioners could profit from being encouraged to install a distribution, and answerers could spend their time more productively by not having to address the mentioned issues.
So, the question is: should we recommend (in comments or otherwise) against the use of online platforms? If yes, only when problems are directly related to the use of the platform, or in general (cf. "btw, don't put 25 packages in your preamble if you use only three of them, even though everything works fine now")?