don't give a non-answer to someone's question. Ex. if someone asks how to do X, don't answer with, "Why are you trying to do X? You shouldn't want to do X. Do Y instead." Instead, explain what it would take to do X, and then offer Y as a possible alternative and why it may be a better option. But assume they already know about Y, and it doesn't fit their use-case.

I can get behind the spirit of this, but often times this is caused by people taking the wrong first steps to solve an issue and then getting lost in the weeds while asking for the solution to where they're stuck, rather than asking about the original problem. In this case, usually both X and Y are bad answers, and asking why they aren't doing Y can elucidate more about the whole situation.