I will scream at the next person who emails me directly with some technical question. It’s bad enough when people email me directly about projects that I happen to be the maintainer of, or one day sent an email about, instead of asking the whole mailing list. But why the hell do people think it’s a good idea to ask me generic software development questions instead of using a newsgroup or mailing list. Am I really likely to help some student write his whole thesis or do a free requirements and design analysis for some system architect? It’s pure lunacy – they should be locked up for their own good. It’s like a highly-targeted form of spam, but still spam. And then they get offended when I tell them to go away. Somewhere my email is listed as a technical support contact for the world and people are not satisfied with the level of service.