Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Started/@comment-25523075-20151020133442/@comment-4731443-20151021013113

It's a good idea not to make assumptions about a situation or what a person knows or doesn't know. If someone asks for help with CSS they say they've written, I'll assume they know some CSS and might skip some basic details like where custom CSS is located, but in case of doubt, try to be specific without sounding condescending. For example, instead of saying "Ask the staff about it", linking directly to Special:Contact is more helpful. Saying "you can change the font color in the table's style" isn't clear if the user doesn't know how to style a wikitext table. Etc.

Something that came up yesterday I think is not to make assumptions about a person's gender either. Some people specify theirs on their profile so you can have a look there, but otherwise it's more polite to use "he/she" or "they" when referring to them.

When someone doesn't give enough information about their problem, don't be snarky when asking for more. Tell them what you need to help them and teach them how to ask better questions so they can get help faster in the future.

If you decide to go change code on their wiki yourself, it's probably a good idea to create a subpage for it (especially for templates that may be in use already) if you're not certain that the result is what they want, and generally to provide an edit summary.

Most of it comes down to common sense and courtesy, really. And I would say, don't reply to a thread if you don't have anything of use to add just because you want to contribute. But going back I see that Tupka already covered that, so I'll follow my own advice ;)

Since you asked about not knowing enough (again Tupka's advice on knowing what you don't know is excellent), one thing to note is that offering a partial answer is fine. Often, people hope for a quick answer. If I see that they have yet to be answered and their problem is related to a feature I know little about, I'll let them know that it is, point them to potentially helpful sources of information, then let them know I can't do more and leave the rest to other contributors. This way they have the beginning of an answer but I don't waste their time making them think I can fix their issue. And sometimes your bit of information will help others find a solution.