> after enough instances of "I'm trying to do X. It's not working. Help." type messages.
Related to this, I will never for the life of me understand why people think it's okay to say "I get an error" without saying what the error is.
I don't expect a non-technical person to understand the error, but I do expect a non-technical person to know that what the error message is is useful to the person trying to help you and to proactively provide the contents of the error message, even if it's a shitty cell phone picture of the error.
The thing is, they've still taken the time to actually write "I get an error". So by principle of reciprocity, you can just take 2 seconds to say, "What's the error?" Usually that won't lead anywhere; but as long as you don't spend more time than they are, you aren't really wasting much time; and they can't exactly complain that you weren't helpful. And occasionally it will lead somewhere, in which case it's a win.