Smart questions are ones that demonstrate the user tried to solve the problem to the best of their abilities before they post it. They respect the spirit of the forum by asking the question publicly and except in rare occasions, expect answers that will be available to the public. The question properly demonstrates the problem with the least amount of words and shows that the user attempted to solve the problem themselves before seeking help online.
Smart questions are important because they act as an expected format for questions by users of the forum. It minimizes the amount of useless information or pointless gratitude, allowing people, who are busy with their own problems to minimize the time spent finding the crux of the problem in the question, and thus start working on the solution. Asking smart questions are also important for the person asking the question because it first requires you to attempt to solve the problem on their own. Attempting a problem first is one of the best ways to learn and understand a problem, and who knows maybe you’ll find the solution yourself. After the initial research and you can’t find the solution, then you can seek help online. However, to get the best possible help you want to phrase your question in a certain way. You want to explain what you did and specifically where things start to go wrong. This gives people on the forum the most possible information on the problem, allowing them to give a more accurate solution to your problem.
An example of a not smart question is saying you want your code to achieve x, how do I do it? Then posting your code which is bare-boned and looks as if you didn’t attempt to try to solve the problem before asking the question. Asking such a question will generally result in people telling you to do it yourself, as seen in this StackOverflow question. The question was closed due to it being not focused enough and the first response is telling the person to show that an attempt has been made.
An example of a smart question is this StackOverflow question. In it, the user wants clarification on the usage of “use strict” in JavaScript. They mention that they were able to solve an error in their code using it, and didn’t find any significant results when googling on the history of it. They ask what is “use strict”, its application, relevancy, and how current browsers respond to it. The questioner asked the question smartly by showing that they did their research on the matter before asking the question and asks for clarification on specific issues instead of simply stating something like “explain use strict to me”. The most voted on answer to the question is a person linking an article that helps clarify the issues the questioner had and quotes parts of the article the person believed would help the questioner.