Everyday around 2.000 people read our support pages. New and old Fairphone owners find the information that helps them use their devices longer and better. These support articles are the diamonds on our website and essential to achieve one of the Fairphone goals: longevity.
But our small team does not have the capacity to write answers for all the questions people have. That is why, today we are inviting the community to contribute new content and help us making our support pages even better.
###Here are the most wanted topics: Feel free to choose any, create a new topic in a fitting category and share your knowledge!
Migrate from a Fairphone 1 to a Fairphone 2.
Alarm does not go off when phone is switched off.
Screen does not react while charging.
Where can I find advice on how to replace modules?
Where can I get a Screen cover for the Fairphone 1 & 2?
Do I need a Google account? What are the benefits and what are the downsides?
How to backup a Fairphone correctly without installing extra stuff from the app store
How to get proper debugging info from a Fairphone, so that users can provide useful information to the developers.
Or choose a topic you feel is asked about a lot and could do with an article!
Here some tips and guidelines to get you started:
Choose your topic carefully. It’s a good idea to start with a topic you’re comfortable discussing.
Choose a clear, succinct title. You want to simply, clearly tell your reader what your article will tell them how to do.
Write an introduction that summarizes your article. Be brief - you shouldn’t need more than a paragraph. Also be sure to include the purpose of the article. Above all, don’t meander! A directionless introduction can kill an otherwise informative article.
Add a list of the tools needed so people are ready to follow your guide and don’t have to pause halfway to get something (Charger, SD card, Android SDK)
Write your instructions in the form of chronological steps. Try to limit each step to one idea.
Add screenshots or drawings to enhance your steps.
Test your manual or have it tested by someone else.
Prepare for feedback. Probably the community has great ideas on how to improve. Make sure they can add ideas (by making it a wiki) or add information that is a clear improvement yourself.
The brightest and clearest articles will be copy pasted to our support pages and of course the people who wrote them will be attributed. All our material will always be released under an open license (CC3.0)
That’s a good idea. Here are some more if there are any takers, I hope it’s okay to put them here. I never really figured those out myself:
Bit more advanced topics
How to backup a Fairphone correctly without installing extra stuff from the app store
How to get proper debugging info from a Fairphone, so that users can provide useful information to the developers.
Oh and I don’t think:
Is a good topic for a guide. Other phones work normally (including the FP1) while plugged in, so maybe this could be a hardware issue (grounding?). Or has this been checked by the ODM already?
Isn’t the the only known solution to this to turn on quickboot mode, which is still buggy and causing endless bootloops?
Workaround: Don’t turn off the phone but put it in airplane mode instead. That’s a bit short for a support article.
Use a different charger. Nothing else to say either.
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to open a wiki for these topics, and either link to the wikis from the support page or copy the contents of the wikis to the support page?
I am just thinking that a few people together may be able to produce a more comprehensive article than single users, but also to avoid people doing redundant work (and to avoid someone having to merge multiple articles)?
In my opinion that would be even better, but as we have seen here, there is currently not too much support for this idea.
This limitation given, I think it would still be better to create wikified threads here in the forum to the various topics rather then letting people work individually on articles.
(Edit: And in case FP eventually decides to go for a real wiki, these articles could still serve as starting points there as well).
My opinion as well. That’s the reason, why I write howto’s in the same way I would write a wiki-article without superfluous thoughts and unnecessary junk. Perhaps I can use “copy and paste” one day …
Yes, this is the idea. See step 8 above: [quote=“Douwe, post:1, topic:20024”]
Prepare for feedback. Probably the community has great ideas on how to improve. Make sure they can add ideas (by making it a wiki) or add information that is a clear improvement yourself.
[/quote]
People who want to contribute, can start a new topic and write the step-by-step guide. Then make it a wiki and allow others to make it even better. If it looks like it has become a good article, we can copy paste this to the support pages.
The idea is that at a later stage all support articles get linked to wiki’s on the forum, so that every article can be improved by the community.
Hey Spielmops, we are currently busy installing and testing our own installation of weblate. We hope this will help us to make it easier for community members like you to help us.
