I see many large project addressing this issue by not having a public list where you can talk directly to the developers. Instead there is user lists which publ

I see many large project addressing this issue by not having a public list where you can talk directly to the developers. Instead there is user lists which public relation managers maintain and where the expected result from the original mail would either be no response or a polite and nicely written one about testing the user configuration options that they had already tested. That way the developer would not need to respond unless the user has shown enough proof of work to demonstrate to the public relation managers that the issue should be forwarded to a developer, in which case the answer the developer would reply with would be under the assumption that the person/team asking is capable enough to use the directions to dig, test, change, and create a patch which then later might be added to the project.