I'm afraid that if I complain about this, I'm also guilty of it sometimes, but:
If someone says, very clearly, "I tried [software thing] X and I'm seeing Y, which is not what I expect. I expect Z. But *should* I expect Z?" it is REALLY helpful if the response includes an answer "Yes, I also expect Z, that's weird." or "No, Y is what I expect, because [reason reason reason]"
@jcreed Related: I try hard to teach the FIRST students I work with that bug report pattern, and I also find myself sharing it often with colleagues. It is not nearly as knowledge as I'd assumed, and I think it's really helpful for minimizing potential misunderstanding.
@mtomczak and maybe what I'm observing here is that empirically, in organizations of humans trying to accomplish things together, the "(3) I expected Z" is the really scarce and precious data.
Like, I can *repeat* experiments to find out what happens. But I can't read peoples' minds.
@mtomczak yeah, for sure, it's not something I was born knowing either, it has been drilled into me by long-ago mentor-type people explicitly explaining their strategy, as you are, to make it DEAD OBVIOUS clear that (1) I tried X (2) I saw Y (3) I expected Z, as well as really combing over the X to make sure it's maximally reproducible