Contributing to the SUMO Forums

If you're interested in contributing Firefox, helping out with user support is one of the easiest ways to get started. Before you dive in, here are some guidelines and tips for contributing to the Firefox Support Forum from a veteran of a couple months (and a couple of Firefox update releases).

The Knowledge Base is your friend

The best thing you can do is to get familiar with what's in the Knowledge Base. It's much easier to link to a KB article than type out the solution yourself, and the KB articles have been checked over for accuracy and are hopefully clear.

Take a look at the Most Popular Support Articles list - Lots an lots of problems can be solved by clearing cookies and the cache. Others can be solved by checking out Firefox's Safe Mode and troubleshooting add-ons.
Know what the articles say - it's helpful to link to the Profiles article for a question about making a new profile, but linking to Managing Profiles is even better.
Think outside the SUMO Box - For bonus points, also take a look at MozilaZine's KnowledgeBase. There's a wealth of information there.

Act like Sherlock Holmes

Observations of small things can be very useful. You might not be able to determine the entire past history of a poster based on the frequency of letters used in his post, but you might be able to get a better idea of a solution to his problem.

Take note of the Operating System - The differences between OS's is important. Mac and Linux users might not like it so much if you ask them to look in the C:\Program Files\ folder.
Look at the Extensions List - Knowing how different extensions act and interact can help a lot. If a poster lists an extension mentioned in MozillaZine's list of Problematic Extensions, that can help solve her problem speedy-quick.
Don't forget the plugins - The "twisty" (+) can reveal helpful information. See two versions of Flash installed? That can cause problems, as the Flash article mentions. See the Mozilla ActiveX plugin listed? Recommend removing that! - see the ActiveX article for details.

When in doubt, search

It's hard to memorize the contents of all the KB articles, previous forum posts, and forum posts from MozillaZine's forum (unless you're cor-el), so. I have Smart Keywords set up for these:

Search the SUMO KB
Search the SUMO Forum
Search the MozillaZine KB
Search the MozillaZine Forum

Act like a professional amateur

Keep in mind that most people aren't really too happy about having to post technical questions and, unlike me, don't find troubleshooting obscure plugin issues to be really cool.

Show your work - Not everyone knows how to get to what you mean if you say "Oh, it's in the Windows Program Access/Defaults panel," so be sure to explain how to do what you suggest. The smart thing to do is to do it yourself on your system to make sure you get all the steps.
Be nice - As above, technical problems are frustrating. You don't need to defend Mozilla or Firefox if a poster says "Firefox sucks!" Posting a solution to his problem is a better counter-demonstration than anything else. Similar comments apply for things like "You suck!" Remember, Firefox is just a web browser, and nothing about which you need to get upset.