Our buddy Kyle at iFixIt.com has just announced a beta version of iFixIt Answers, a collaborative repair community for gadgets. It might be a great resource for friends and family who can’t figure out how to work the TV remote.
How does it work?
You ask a question on Answers and then can follow as folks help out and answer your questions. This also creates a database of answers for multiple devices including MacBooks, iPods, and Sony laptops. It’s a good idea because Kyle has a great following of DIYers and most of them aren’t out to troll the forums with dumb questions or answers.
Here’s his mission:
Answers is a natural progression from our successful forums. The community will have complete control over the content on Answers, and the system will be collaboratively managed by you, and other people like you. Every question and answer can be voted on by anyone and edited by members of the community.
As we were designing Answers, we had four guiding imperatives:
1. It’s important that posts get more useful over time. It’s not uncommon for a traditional repair forum response to become the canonical source for an answer to a problem, only to get outdated and stagnant as technology changes.
2. It’s important that we recognize expertise. It matters if the author of an answer is a professional technician, or has helped 200 people fix their problems.
3. It’s important to make helping people fun. There’s a rush that comes from helping someone solve a tricky problem, being recognized by people for the research you put into a question before asking it, or testing your hardware diagnosis mettle against others.
4. And most important, we need to close the feedback loop between the people answering questions and those asking them. Repairing things is uniquely tangible — when you use a solution proposed by someone, you know for a fact whether or not it worked. Finding out that the answer you gave someone actually fixed their problem is one of the greatest feelings in the world.
Want to try it? Pop over here, create an account, and get cracking. He’s opened up the Beta to CrunchGear users and he’s curious to know what you think.
Is Apple going to sue him too? Isn’t it against their EULA to open up your apple product?
This is going to be a superb thing. So there would be a big database soon if this is achieved. As the previous comment says, yes Apple will sue if the apple product is opened.
I have trouble believing apple would actually sue, seeing as how iFixit has been tearing down apple products for over six years, without a single lawsuit (as far as I know of at least).
If you own a device, there is nothing illegal about taking it apart. This also gives people a way to fix those things they’ve always wanted to fix, but instead spend lots of money to get it repaired, such as my mom’s sewing machine or my oscilloscope.
LOL we already use Google for that.
http://answers.yahoo.com
It’s great. And if you want your own Q&A for your site which can be up in no time just go to http://www.yousaidit.com.
Q&A is at last finding it’s way out of abstruse forums and into structured, discoverable media where a normal person can navigate to solve issues without trolling through endless unsolicited opinion. Yeah for ifixit and others like them.
[full disclosure if it wasn't obvious: I'm the co-founder of YouSaidIt a Social Q&A provider]
Hey, I get all my daughters old iPods virture of iFixit, the only place with the right and good answers! And they get me parts!!
I love those guys. CG posted about ifixit and I responded in posts why were they more expensive; none other than the CEO answered. I was impressed by his answer, and I ended up using them for a macbook upgrade and an iphone 3g repair. Even though the screen for the iphone died just outside the 30 days, and the awesome guy on the other end of the email, Brady, took care of me quickly and with humor.
I love their free guides, and am sure I will love their new site. Go IFixIt!