[peterwwillis]

You get to decide how much support you're going to give, and what kind of access. The easier access people have to you, the more they're going to share their frustrations and start demanding things.

My first suggestion is to limit access. Only provide a mailing list e-mail address, so people know their comments are going to be public, and they have to subscribe to it and craft an e-mail.

Second I'd suggest you provide your users with clear expectations of use and support. Tell them you're not producing it for them, but for you, so you're not going to take feature requests, but you are open to suggestions. Tell them you aren't responsible if they can't get it working, but you are open to legitimate bug reports. Provide a mechanism to determine bug reports such as system information dumps to spend less time troubleshooting.

If people get through your filters and are still rude, there's always public shaming.

[dessant]

I agree that this is how it should work. Though in practice issue and feature request templates are usually left there unfilled, and people will find a way to reach out on all of your social media accounts. My experience has been that the lines we draw are regularily disrespected.

[peterwwillis]

More and more projects are turning off GH Issues & PRs and I think it's a good practice.

I think setting the expectations early and visibly may prevent some of the disrespect on social media, but private or pseudonymous amounts may help too. (Maybe all code authors should use pseudonyms, the way book authors do?)