Ensuring Quality Repair Information on iFixit

iFixit has been building repair manuals for electronics since 2003. Since then, we’ve expanded into the best free online repair database. iFixit is a collaborative community effort—anyone can submit a guide or answer a question. We believe repair is for everyone. The guides our technical writing staff creates are some of the best repair instructions in the world, but our community is incredibly dedicated to helping fix anything you can imagine, and our student outreach programs help the next generation of fixers to fly.

So how do we ensure the best possible repair experience, with the most up-to-date knowledge and most accurate instructions? Like Wikipedia, iFixit is the result of millions of small improvements from people like you, but we also have procedures and policies in place to ensure those improvements are up to par. Let’s lay out the different kinds of repair information we share with the world, and how it all gets reviewed.

We believe that step-by-step guides with imagery and concise text is the best way to teach DIY repair. For more specific problems, our Answers forum can give quick solutions. We collect all the repair guides and questions for a single product onto that product’s wiki. That product can then be nested into other higher-level wiki categories. Each of those items can be improved over time, and will exist as a reference for fixers in the future. Each of these areas of content—guides, wikis, and Answers—go through review processes, but depending on their authors the procedure is a bit different.

The technical writing team is highly trained in disassembly, photography, technical writing, and visual communication. Guides created by iFixit’s in-house team of technical writers are among the best available. iFixiters also create and maintain wiki pages for products, troubleshooting, and device categories.

iFixit guides are planned, photographed, edited, and assembled by a tech writer or team of tech writers. Another tech writer then verifies the draft guide for quality assurance, ensuring the guide is easy to understand and doesn’t miss any steps. The guide is then published and open to both comments and community edits. Comments help fixers understand where others have struggled, and offer alternative methods. Community edits suggest necessary changes, and are verified by repair experts before being integrated into the guide.

• Learn more about the Technical Writing team and their contributions.

Meet the Technical Writing team

The iFixit Technical Writing project has partnered with more than 90 universities to teach repair and technical writing. Every academic year, teams of technical writing and engineering students from coast to coast work together to create thousands of repair manuals on iFixit. The education department at iFixit is a team of dedicated educators and communicators. They have published in peer-reviewed academic journals about education, repair, and sustainability and regularly train professors and students to create amazing repair resources.

The Education team coordinates with university instructors to match students with the tools they need to create and publish repair guides—electronic devices, photography resources, email guidance, screwdrivers and prying tools, and more. Student guides are then planned, photographed, edited, and assembled by a group of university students, usually majoring in engineering or technical writing. Student-created content is reviewed by their peers and instructors before undergoing a final check by iFixit staff, who flag any necessary changes to be made. The content is then published and open to both comments and community edits.

• See what the education team has accomplished.
• Learn more about the EDU team.
• Learn more about the iFixit Technical Writing Project.
• Browse guides made by awesome students.

Meet the Education Department

The iFixit community is international, extremely diverse, and very passionate about repair. The iFixit Community Management team is composed of translators, community managers, and communicators. They help interface with users and volunteer contributors through the Meta forum, and make sure content contributed by community members is reviewed. Contributions in the Answers forum are reviewed via the moderation system, and guide and wiki content is reviewed via patrol:

When a community member writes and publishes a guide or wiki, it enters the queue to be reviewed by an expert fixer. Unless made by an expert, edits to a guide are placed into the patrol review queue to be resolved by an experienced fixer or translator. Experienced fixers and translators have demonstrated their trustworthiness by sharing helpful repair information, answering questions well, and making accurate contributions to iFixit. Reputation is the gauge we use to measure that expertise.

The iFixit Community Management Team oversees content curation and patrolling, moderation, spam, and compliance with community guidelines, as well as site issues and community questions. The iFixit Translation team uses the same procedures to ensure that all languages follow the same quality standards and that content is accurately translated.

• Learn more about community edits.
• Learn more about the iFixit Translation Project.
• Find out how to help build the iFixit Community.
• Report spam or a community issue.

Meet the Community and Translation teams

iFixit is more than just a repair database; we’re also leading the Right to Repair charge. We’re committed to spreading the word about repair, and the best way to do that is by writing high-quality, accurate, and engaging content. The Editorial team creates and manages our teardowns, blog posts, and YouTube channel videos. Whether we’re addressing unfair repair practices in tractors, tearing down consumer electronics, or talking about scandals and design failures, we’re working towards a world where we don’t have to complain so much.

Our advanced technical team collects and uncovers the most relevant tech stories. After verifying the accuracy of the claims or running our own tests, our team of writers, editors, and technical experts review the piece, ensuring an informed, quality result. Our editorial team is distinct from our sales departments, we disclose business partnerships, and we maintain our independent voice. If you have questions about our editorial work, would like to report a factual error, or would like to know more, the editorial team would be happy to investigate and address your questions.

• Learn more about our partnerships.
• Learn more about the Right to Repair.
• Send an anonymous tip.