Can there be a pro mechanic forum? Where we can ask questions or share ideas/experience? I appreciate that might appear snobbish as there are many very good amateur mechanics (as I was once) - but people doing tons of work for money have different takes and are usually basing their opinions on a sample size way larger than N=1, and have opinions/experience of the trade that others don’t.
That’s what I’m after. I belong to a large FB group of supposedly pro mechanics (I have my doubts). It’s mostly OK but you know - FB.
Maybe the pro mech page could be read-only for everyone else?
As an amateur (read “hack”) mechanic, I’d really like to be able to read over the shoulder of the pros and pick up tips. Insta tips can only go so far, and Geek Warning can only cover a few topics every time it’s posted.
I’d like to see something like pro mechanic forum work but can’t see how it will from a practical perspective.
I’m working on bikes daily and contributed often to Tech Help posts on the discord but did find advise or knowledge from me and other mechanics got lost in relies from users with limited experience.
There are also situations where I’ve tried to provide help but quickly realise the person asking is not really experienced enough to do the work themselves.
What I’d really like to see here is an structure that makes it easy to, and encourages people to, search for a solution before asking a tech question that has been asked 10’s of times before. For example, there are so many threads are there on discord relating to bike creaks or unexpected noises.
We can create “wiki” topics here that can be updated by all as a “source of truth” over time. A “Bike Creak Diagnosis” wiki topic would be a great addition,
This sounds like a good idea; it might be difficult to police who is really a pro mechanic, vs the guy who helps out 1 day a week at the local bike cafe, vs someone who retired 10 years ago. A wiki page with verified information would be a very useful resource to fill the void left by the passing of Sheldon.
Maybe a start could be that users get a „pro mechanic“ tag/batch next to their name. I think of sth like Strava does for Pros.
But yes, the verification process who’s a pro would need to happen nevertheless.
Yeah adding an icon to the avatar is pretty straightforward. And we have the identified users already in our membership system. It’s just about finding the easiest way to align those two separate systems. It’s very doable but just need to spend some time on it to get it right.
I’m not sure what the incentive would be for the pros. Most likely they would be bombarded with follow-up questions from folks looking for free advice for their particular case. I could see that getting tiresome pretty fast. Ask a Wrench is already a great resource.
The main reason I signed up for Escape Collective is for Geek Warning podcasts and in particular the pro mechanic stuff. I’m a home mechanic and volunteer weekly in a local co-op. I want as much pro-mechanic info as possible. It would be a shame if it were inacessible to the masses.
How I see it working, is it’s a forum page for pros to talk to each other - with others read-only. Yes that might sound elitist - but if as you say it’s a hot mess of home enthusiast takes, I for one wouldn’t bother and I’m sure others would feel the same.
So it’s a bit tragedy-of-the-commons - there needs to be some rules/exclusivity to ensure there’s value for all.
Would the same approach be possible for industry members of the trade - I loved the idea of that Discord sub-channel, but it didn’t take flight. It would be useful to eithere have that read-only or completely private…?
I’d vote for a pro only forum with regulars having read access only. Would be great to be a fly on the wall for those discussions and surely the quality would be higher without the plebs butting in!
Just a little update here. We’ve defined the solution to identify our Industry members here on the forum and add them to a group. We can add a distinct avatar icon to these members so they’re identifiable.
We just need to actually build this functionality now, which will likely occur in the next week or so.
After that we can do something like creating an Industry Category with a Wrench sub-category which is fully interactive for Industry members and read-only for the rest of our members. I’ll figure out exactly what this will look like once the grouping functionality is in place.
That’s awesome news. Having a resource for us mechanics to ask each other questions would be great. Didn’t even realise there was such a place on Discord!
Is that now defunct?
- fantastic news, thanks for updating us all.