Goal: 
Find a "support request" issue that someone has reported. Answer the person's question, or refer them to a more appropriate place to get support. Note that in most contributed module and theme projects, the project maintainers encourage people to request support in their project's issue queue. However, in the Drupal Core project and the Documentation project, support requests are not encouraged, and on some project pages, the maintainers may state another method for getting support.
Skills required: 
Providing support
Background and reference information: 
Overview of projects and issues
Find the issues for a project
Searching for issues
Issue etiquette
Issue Category field
Issue Status field
Templates for issue status changes
Creating or updating an issue report
Detailed steps: 
  1. Set up prerequisites: Log in from Common Prerequisites for Contributors.
  2. Select a project to work on (Drupal core, or a contributed module, theme, or distribution). It's best to choose one you know how to use, so that you can possibly answer support questions on it.
  3. Determine whether support for this project should use the project's issue queue or another channel. Drupal core does not use the project's issue queue; most other projects do unless stated on the project page.
  4. From the project page, click the link in the sidebar for Open issues, to get to the issue list.
  5. Search for issues in Category "support request", with Status "Active". Click the Replies column header twice to sort by the number of replies (lowest number first).
  6. If the issue list is empty, or there are no active support issues that have not already been replied to, choose a different project to work with.
  7. Click the title of an issue that needs a response, to view the issue page.
  8. Respond to the issue, if you can, by adding a comment and changing issue status and other fields (see Creating or updating an issue for more information on how to add a comment and change the issue status). Suggested responses:
    If the project does not use issues for support questions
    Change the issue status to "Fixed", and add the following comment (if the project uses a different support mechanism, also link to that in your comment):

    It looks like you need some support. I'm sorry, but although you can create issues in this project and mark them as support requests, we don't really handle support questions using issues in this project.

    You can find more appropriate support options if you navigate to Resources > Support at the top of Drupal.org, which will take you to:
    http://drupal.org/support

    Good luck with your issue!

    If you know of some documentation or another issue or forum post that answers the question
    Change the issue status to "Fixed", and add a comment that politely provides a link to the documentation. Suggested comment:

    This question is answered pretty well in the following documentation:
    [link to the documentation]
    If you still have questions after reading the documentation, feel free to open up this issue again with those questions.

    If the question is not clear or is missing some needed information
    Change the issue status to "Postponed (maintainer needs more info)", and add a comment that details the additional information you would need to answer the question.
    If the issue the person is having is really a software bug and not a support request
    Change the issue category to "bug report", and add a comment that explains why you think it is a bug instead of a support request.
    If the issue the person is having is really a feature request and not a support request
    Change the issue category to "feature request", and add a comment that explains why you think it is a feature request instead of a support request.
    If none of the above situations apply, and you know the answer to the question
    Change the issue status to "fixed", and add a comment that answers the question. Be polite and respectful! You might also include the following line at the end:

    If you still have questions after reading this, feel free to open up this issue again with those questions.