[vidarh]

> These days asking questions of an expert usually gets you a response of JFGI

To me it seems that most people I ask questions of are happy to respond. But the key thing being that the ease of asking people questions means that you need to ask people questions they haven't heard a thousand times and written a book about. And that you can easily answer with Google.

It's lazy ad insulting if you e-mail and ask something you'd find a whole article about on the persons site, for example, because it implies you couldn't be bothered to even see they've already written about the subject, and don't respect their time.

But if you ask about the finer points of something they've written, on the other hand, they are more likely to be flattered, intrigued or at least willing to point you in the right direction.