This game has serious free-rider problems and it's getting worse. A suggestion.

[Krotoan]

There's definitely a wrong way to help or offer advice to someone but you can't stop people from perceiving things a certain way. Like I said you're more likely to get 2nd hand reported than from the person you're actually conversing with.
There are people in this game who get offended for "teaching" sprouts and will say "you are the reason people don't like to tank" when explaining to sprouts that pulling mobs until you die isn't a bad thing, you won't know your limits unless you try, proceed troll your run by pulling mobs for the tank when they don't get their way and then not see the hypocrisy of their statements.

I can't stop someone from absolutely taking something the wrong way but I can make sure that objectively my statements and assistance are non-threatening, non-abusive, non-aggressive and use "clean" language. People CAN report you for anything but as those reports are investigated by human beings, it's exceedingly unlikely you will actually be dinged for something completely innocuous. 2nd hand reports don't count. GM's themselves have said unless the thing happened to you, the report doesn't count. People reacting badly is bad and happens for sure, but the important part is how you react back to that. As long as you don't escalate or break rules, you can just report them for being .. well.. jerks.

I personally don't find a reason for knowledge to be kept secret so I'm not going to go out of my way to whisper people after the fact.

I'm.. not sure what this means. You want to share the right way to do it but don't think you should have to "whisper" to make sure it's a 1 on 1 interaction?

It's not toxic, it's the reality of the situation. I wouldn't mind offering all the help in the world if strikes went away. But I don't know how long I'm going to play this game and I'm not risking a permanent strike on my account for nothing.
I have no strikes, and I refuse to give anyone a chance to give me one. That said it's not hard to converse with people casually on non-confrontational issues.

Teaching is confrontational in this game.

The reality of the situation is there are a few very weird narratives people run that affect how people interact. I say toxic because that's exactly what they do: they poison the minds of people who hear them and believe it. They make people afraid to even talk to anyone because "if you talk to anyone you'll eventually get banned". They make people confrontational because "the community is actually really toxic underneath and just limited by rules" so people assume the worst intentions. They make people choose certain servers because "Everyone on that server is an ERP-er and will try to drag you into it".

The list goes on.

Sure you can avoid ever being in a car accident by never driving anywhere (well.. realistically you can't cause people might still crash into YOU.. but .. metaphor) but you will miss out on the fun and convenience of driving by doing so. This is the same mentality behind never ever giving advice or helping people.

I'm not going to force you, but I will say that in 10+ years I've never had one conversation with a GM that wasn't because I personally submitted a ticket and I do my best to advise people when I see "problems".

Sometimes it's taken badly (sometimes surprisingly badly), but most of the time it's met with either silence or adjustment and rarely "thank you!". So far it's never been followed up by a GM conversation.