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Op can't avoid this problem if following the reviews-masquerading-as-affiliate-marketing pattern. What's needed is to turn it all upside down: rather than revi

Op can't avoid this problem if following the reviews-masquerading-as-affiliate-marketing pattern. What's needed is to turn it all upside down: rather than reviewing new products, review broken products. Make a site about how things break -- review broken and worn-out products to teach how to identify cheap products (where are the stress points, what manufacturing techniques exist to alleviate those). Then compare those with used products well past their warranty period that haven't broken, and look at why they haven't. Repairability also comes to mind. Everything breaks eventually -- can't cheat entropy -- but when it does, can you easily repair it? Right-to-repair movement would get in on the action.

Forge36 6y ago
I like that idea. Include a spot for "how do I fix it" or "repair guide".
steve_adams_86 6y ago
Damn, I love this! Sort of a crowd-sourced ifixit for anything broken. It would be hard as hell to get good content, but if you could I think it would be gold. It would be so hard to maintain repair guides with how frequently products update these days. Everything from vacuums to laptops to shoes go through frequent enough revisions that guides might be invalidated often. I went to repair my vacuum last month and discovered most of the guides out there cover an revision which uses a totally different latching mechanism for the door to my intake filter. The doors look identical, but the internal latch works differently. Overall that would have been fine, but I got blocked on the door part because the procedure didn't work and I assumed I was going to break it if I tried something else, haha. Turned out I just needed to push in and slide down.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  It’s be great to tackle for smartphones. And an experienced repair shop tech could probably write it all!
  - steve_adams_86 6y ago
    Ifixit actually has a pretty stellar site for most common phones - at least, every phone I’ve owned so far. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide https://www.ifixit.com/Guide I’m realizing now that they’ve actually got way more content than I thought. It isn’t review format, but they rate how difficult different components are to repair on most items which is a step towards what I want. Weird that I thought they only did phones/tablets/computers.

Forge36 6y ago

I like that idea. Include a spot for "how do I fix it" or "repair guide".

steve_adams_86 6y ago

Damn, I love this! Sort of a crowd-sourced ifixit for anything broken. It would be hard as hell to get good content, but if you could I think it would be gold. It would be so hard to maintain repair guides with how frequently products update these days. Everything from vacuums to laptops to shoes go through frequent enough revisions that guides might be invalidated often. I went to repair my vacuum last month and discovered most of the guides out there cover an revision which uses a totally different latching mechanism for the door to my intake filter. The doors look identical, but the internal latch works differently. Overall that would have been fine, but I got blocked on the door part because the procedure didn't work and I assumed I was going to break it if I tried something else, haha. Turned out I just needed to push in and slide down.

quickthrower2 6y ago
It’s be great to tackle for smartphones. And an experienced repair shop tech could probably write it all!
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  Ifixit actually has a pretty stellar site for most common phones - at least, every phone I’ve owned so far. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide https://www.ifixit.com/Guide I’m realizing now that they’ve actually got way more content than I thought. It isn’t review format, but they rate how difficult different components are to repair on most items which is a step towards what I want. Weird that I thought they only did phones/tablets/computers.