Restarters forums aren't on search engines

[Guy]

What’s the rationale for this? I tried to access a thread on my phone but it’s only accessible through log-in.

I thought it would be nice if the public could find the site for google when searching model numbers and the like, it might attract more repairers, too.

[james]

Hi Guy,

Great question.
At the moment, some forum categories are open to search engines and people without accounts whereas others are only accessible to logged-in members, including Repair stories, which is where most of the model-specific repair information is located.

click/tap here for more detail about which categories are open and which are members only

@Restart

These categories are visible to non-registered users (anyone on the internet):

• Repair in your community (How to repair in your community)
• Right to repair: policy & activism (Right to repair: policy & activism)
• Events (Events)
• Help & Feedback (Help & feedback) [not including the feature requests or bug reports subcategories]

Topics in these categories can be read by anyone with internet access without logging in (and will be indexed by search engines). However, only registered members can post.

All other categories are members-only: they are only visible to people who are registered and logged in. These members-only categories are marked with a padlock symbol on the category page.

The decision to open some categories up and keep others members-only was the result of this conversation, which might be helpful to read for the full context:

Which discussion categories should be public?

Restarters.net is about to enter the next stage of development: public beta. One of the more significant changes we’ll be making as part of this is opening up selected discussion categories to non-registered visitors - i.e. the internet at large Check the community development plan for more detail about the public beta. Given everything’s been private to registered members so far, we don’t want to take anyone by surprise or make public any discussions intended to be private. So, here’s what we’re thinking at the moment for each category: Repair in your community - go public Repair sto…

It may be that the time has come to revisit this question, especially regarding the Repair stories category.

[Guy]

That makes sense.

I really like the expertise on this forum and I really enjoy repairing things so I use the forum as a way to share projects I am stuck on so that I can get better at repairing.

I love when I find a relevant youtube video or blog with tips for a certain repair online and I’d love others to be able to benefit from the expertise here as well as potentially stumble upon it as a place they would like to learn or teach.

The repair help category is certainly where I am posting this so if this is reconsidered in the future then perhaps it would make sense for repair-stories to remain members only.

[james]

I agree completely that there is some fantastic expertise on the forum and that it would be nice to make it accessible to people who haven’t joined or discovered this community yet. Currently, the Repair Wiki is our way of documenting and sharing repair advice; it’s designed to be an educational resource covering key repair skills and techniques, as well as offering information about common categories of devices. You’re more than welcome to contribute to it by the way - simply click the ‘edit’ button on any page to do so.

The Repair Help category is brand new and part of our response to the fact that in-person events aren’t happening at the moment. It’s private to members at the moment mainly because it’s so new and we’re still getting a sense of how it is being used / can be used. My feeling is that once a culture/practice has been established, it will make sense to have a conversation with everyone about opening it up to the wider internet.