Answers

The Answers forum is a community dedicated to helping each other fix our stuff. All of information on Answers is collaboratively created and the community has control over the content.

It takes a village to answer a repair question. iFixit is that village. We don’t run Answers. You do. The community has control over the content on Answers. Answers is collaboratively managed by people just like you. With your help, we can show the world how to fix anything.

Hundreds of thousands of people use iFixit every single day. We’re betting some of them have had the same problem you’re having now—and maybe they figured out how to fix that problem. So, ask your repair question, and know that the entire iFixit community is working to help find you a solution. In fact, all of the information on our site is collaboratively edited by our community. If you ask an interesting question or write a useful answer, other people (who have earned at least 5,000 reputation) may come along and edit the text. That's OK!

In fact, we encourage making posts better over time. Our goal is to build a database of repair guides and answers that’s useful for years to come. We encourage everyone to improve posts by editing or commenting. (If you'd prefer not to let others edit your text, we recommend asking your question elsewhere.)

In order to keep the peace, we've published our Community Guidelines so everyone has a set of rules they can refer back to. By participating on our site, you're agreeing to follow them.

Of course, not every question asked or every solution suggested on the Answers Forum is perfect. Sometimes the questions aren’t related to repair, they don’t have enough information, or they’ve been answered on the site before. And sometimes, our Answers Forum gets attacked by evil spammers.

That’s why we elect certain members of the community as moderators. Our moderators are basically repair superheroes. They help answer questions, clean up the forums, delete bad questions, and vanquish nefarious spammers.

If you think you’d make a great moderator and want to join our volunteer team, don’t hesitate to reach out to community@ifixit.com.

That being said, once you spend some time in our Answers forum, you'll find that you start recognizing a few amazing repair folks that tend to answer a lot of peoples questions. They are our community moderators.

You can identify them by:

a shield for volunteer moderators

a key for iFixit staff admins

Mayer @mayer Member Since 01/04/2010	Dan @danj Member Since 02/01/2012	Jayeff @jayeff Member Since 10/09/2015	VauWeh @vauweh Member Since 10/19/2015
Minho @refectio Member Since 11/09/2015	OldTurkey03 @oldturkey03 Member Since 09/29/2010	Arbaman @arbaman Member Since 06/11/16	Leon @leon97 Member Since 07/03/17
Jacob Mehnert @jmehnert Member Since 10/18/21	Simone Member Since 12/15/19	Jesse Hooton @hootonberg Member Since 07/01/19	Alisha @flannelist Member Since 12/04/2020
BenZ78 @benz78 Member Since 10/15/19	Jerry Wheeler @dadibrokeit Member Since 03/21/22

If you'd like to learn more about what and how moderation works, check out our Answers Moderation Guidelines wiki.

How to Moderate Answers

How to Moderate Questions

How to Pass or Fail a Moderation Vote

The longer a person spends on iFixit, they start to accumulate reputation and badges. These are a guide you can follow to see how much trust a person has earned on the site.

Reputation, also referred to as "rep," is a way for you to see how much someone has interacted in the community. It can be viewed as a measure of trust earned over time. Reputation is earned by doing things that other people find useful. Completing various tasks (like answering a question) earns you certain amounts of reputation, while performing other less-appreciated ones (like spamming) will deduct rep. Attaining certain amounts of reputation, much like gaining levels in a game, will grant you access to perform different tasks around the community. It also lets other people know that you are someone who probably knows what you are talking about (or at least spends a lot of time on the site). Check out the Reputation Tab in your user profile to see how much rep you already have and where it came from.

You can always ask a question or post an answer. As your reputation increases, the community trusts you more, and you'll earn some epic powers around the site. Here are some of the privileges you’ll earn over time:

• 100 Reputation: Vote on moderator actions
• 5,000 Reputation: Edit someone else’s question
• 50,000 Reputation: Edit someone else’s answers

As you interact with the Answers forum or create Guides for the community, you'll have the opportunity to earn badges certifying you as an expert. The count of reputation points as well as the number of badges in each level are displayed under each persons Avatar.

You can click on “Members” at the top right of the Answers forum and view the top ranked contributors by day, week, month or all time. You can also click on individual members to see their reputation points and badges.

To navigate Answers, click the tabs and the links along the top of the page. These tabs allow you to see the most recent active posts, search specific categories of Answers, and view the questions that you are subscribed to. Easily find questions using the search field or view the questions that are the most helpful or need responses. The buttons for this are on the right side of the menu.

Using the Members and Moderation links on the right side, you can see all of the users on Answers and the posts that require moderation. The guide below provides a more in-depth description of these navigation tools:

How to Navigate Answers

Before you ask your question, we recommend doing a quick search for your device to see if your question has already been asked. Odds are that if it has been asked, the answer is already there—so you won’t have to wait for a reply! Check out the database of repair solutions by using the search box at the top of Answers, typing the device name into the search bar.

Clicking on “Most Helpful” below the search box will display all the most popular and helpful answers we have for your device. You can also switch to the “Devices” tab, choose your device, and see all questions and answers available for your item. The device page is also home to all the repair guides, troubleshooting wikis, and additional information we have for that device. Often this is where you’ll find all info you'll need to solve your repair question.

If you come across a question or answer is very helpful (or not), make sure to click “yes” or “no” to help others with the same questions. The more an answer has had “yes” clicked, the higher up on the Answers page that suggestion gets (and the more reputation the user gains for being helpful.)

If you found your question in the forum, but it hasn’t been answered yet, click on the button “I have this problem too” next to the “Answer this question” button. (Don’t forget to save your email address in your profile in order to get an automatic notification when the question has been answered.)

Couldn’t find your answer? Time to click on Ask a Question at the top of the forum. You’ll find shortcuts to the “Ask a Question” interface not only within the Forum, but also on our device pages. Clicking on “Ask a Question” from there will auto-fill the device, so you wont need to pick it any more.

Our community wants to help answer your questions. As you fill in the other required fields, our interactive interface will guide you and give you tips. The better the question, the more answers you’ll get. We’ve set up some simple guidelines to help you ask great questions. If you’ve already posted your question and you’d like to go back and add more, you might want to check our (community written) guide for adding photos to an existing question.

How to Ask a Question

While you're waiting for your answer, why not have a look around to see if you know the answer to any of the questions waiting for help. Everyone's an expert on something, so it would only be fair if you’d lend your expertise to help someone out. You can go to the Answers home page, sort by “Unanswered”. You can also browse the “Devices” tab and choose a device you own or have experience repairing.

How to Respond to a Question

It is such a great experience when other community members successfully solved their problem with your help! This is the moment when you know for sure that you’ve helped someone fix their device and prevented it from ending up in a landfill!

When you answer a question:

• You help someone.
• You help fix the planet.
• You share your knowledge with people all over the world.

There’s usually more than one way to do a repair, so most questions receive multiple answers from our community. We encourage our entire community to upvote good answers, which pushes them to the top of a thread and makes it easier for everyone to find the best information. You should also downvote unhelpful answers to push them to the bottom (this isn’t mean, it’s useful.)

An “accepted” answer indicates the asker has chosen a solution that worked for them. (Another solution on the thread might still work for you, so be sure to look through the entire thread.) An accepted answer will be marked with “chosen solution” and rise to the top of the thread with a green highlighted box around it.

Once you've received an answer to your question, make sure to select whether or not the answer was helpful and leave a comment explaining how it helped you solved your issue. Please make sure to always accept an answer you get when it solves your problem.

Remember iFixit Answers is a community. Your question and the discussion that follows could help just as many people as someone leaving an answer. Therefore, the highest number of reputation points you can earn or give to someone else in the Answers Forum is by accepting an answer as a solution.

When you ask a Question, you are automatically subscribed to receive notifications when an Answer or Comment is posted for your Question.

Also, you can elect to receive notifications about other Questions on the site by subscribing to those Questions. Use the guides below to learn more about notifications and Questions subscribing:

How to Check Notifications

If you have a question about the functioning of our site itself, about our mission, or our software, we have a special place for you. Go to our Meta forum.

If you have a question concerning your order, a part or tool you bought from us, please check out our customer support pages.

There’s always a catch, isn't there…

We make money by selling parts. If you want to help us feed our programmers, buy something or tell your friends about us.

Answers is totally free, and will always be that way. Our goal is to help you keep your stuff working longer. Period. You won't see any Google-baiting, ad-stuffing, or answer-cloaking here.

If you feel we've left anything out in this overview, email us at community@ifixit.com.