I answer every post directed at me personally - if that contributes to derailment, that's a risk I am willing to take.
But please note, the thread was about 120 posts in before elipsis got going with his "straw man" compulsion, and he brought it up, and I tried to curtail it more than once.
History shows that every time I am accused of derailing, it's because I am responding to posts directed to me directly.
I will take my share of the responsibility for threads going off track, but it would be more easy to do that if complainers moaned at the other party or parties equally.
As I said earlier, it takes two (at least!) to argue, I am never the sole source of the problem