Well Mr. Webmaster got kicked thousands of times in the head that day. Mr Three posts a message on alt.widgets. The guy gets 20 emails. The end result is that everyone has a few extra dozen messages to wade through. You might argue that a newbie lurker would see the reaction, and read the FAQ- but this guy didn't do that.
Flamed ritual happens every few days on alt.widgets.
So far the flame system isn't working. A bot probably could have posted a single reply, and forwarded the FAQ to this guys email address. That would make it 9000 submissions ago. These people don't email me. They post it publicly.