As a senior developer I always try to be helpful to others. I love fixing problems, if it is within my capacity to do so. It is not rare, though, that people in need of assistance fail to request it properly. You expect a level of brain farting from a layman, asking for technical support. It is up to the production team to create a product that would guide a person even if it experiences a critical error. But even when you have a clear and expanatory error message, a lot of people tend to ignore its meaning and send a support request regardless. And often that request consists only of a question "What is the issue here?"
On the other side it is then impossible to tell, if a person is illiterate, does not understand the meaning of particular words or just did not bother to read the message and try to figure out what they did wrong. But that's a customer, you make them happy and move along. In my opinion, it is much worse to receive such questions from a collegue or a person of your field, a professional or a student of your craft. It shows lack of will to figure out problems, which is extremely alienating. Now, I don't want to blame any person. There are many reasons, why one can be put off by a simple error message. This can be a new area of expertese and everything is scary and hard. By if there is a genuine desire to learn, then please respect the person, who is trying to help you and apply your mind power to the issue you have.
And be descriptive. It is absolutely awful, when a question is not a question at all, but a hook to start a conversation. Or a set of vague statements. "I tried something, and it does not work". A lot of things can be considered as something not working. Is there an error message? Do you not see a desired result or any result at all? What exactly are you doing and what result are you expecting? Fishing for details wastes a lot of time. Be preemptive and provide as many details as possible from the get-go.
Thank you.