Thread: The Starter Set Dilemma

Originally Posted by gugi

It seems a lot of you are perhaps missing a major resource you can use - the Private Messaging system of this site.

It worked very well for me when I had the dilemma of picking a straight razor for the first time. I had a few that I thought would be good and asked a senior member who seemed very knowledgeable, helpful, and objective about his opinion.

One other really important, and VERY underrated tool... The Member's Map! If you can find someone with decent experience, fairly close to you, then you can learn a metric ****ton from them in short order. You can test their razors (most guys are open to this), play with their strops, sample their brushes and lather their creams and soaps... Seriously if you can meet someone in person, DO IT! It helped me indescribably.

Cheers,
Jeremy

Jeremy - wow, really? I would find someone contacting me randomly off the map kinda creepy. I will take a look at it again, then. thanks.

Gugi - thanks. I will try to find someone willing to take my messages and help me out :-).

So, here's a potentially quite stupid "compromise" idea...

New folk often feel reassured if they get very concrete suggestions. We know that there is no sane one-size-fits-all concrete suggestion that any of the experienced folk here would stand by.

But what about concrete stories about how the experienced folk here started out? There are a fair few shaving superstars around here, who all seem to have very different styles and personalities. If a newbie were to identify with the style of a particular old hand, then they might feel comfortable walking in his or her footsteps while they find their own path.

So what if folk were to start using the "About me" section of their profile pages to answer the questions "What kit did you use for your first few straight shaves? What was good and bad about it?"

Do you all think that would be a neat way to reassure the new folk, or would it just cause more confusion and trouble?

Quite aside from helping out the newbies, would folk here be interested in hearing the origin stories of our local heroes?

Originally Posted by totherme

So, here's a potentially quite stupid "compromise" idea...

New folk often feel reassured if they get very concrete suggestions. We know that there is no sane one-size-fits-all concrete suggestion that any of the experienced folk here would stand by.

But what about concrete stories about how the experienced folk here started out? There are a fair few shaving superstars around here, who all seem to have very different styles and personalities. If a newbie were to identify with the style of a particular old hand, then they might feel comfortable walking in his or her footsteps while they find their own path.

So what if folk were to start using the "About me" section of their profile pages to answer the questions "What kit did you use for your first few straight shaves? What was good and bad about it?"

Do you all think that would be a neat way to reassure the new folk, or would it just cause more confusion and trouble?

Quite aside from helping out the newbies, would folk here be interested in hearing the origin stories of our local heroes?

I like it.

Originally Posted by BKratchmer

I like it.

I will look into writing this into my page. I am thinking of putting down my evolution of straight shaving, including the mistakes and the moments of clarity. I like this idea too.

Sure, I think that would work for some people.
Although I think it's usually not so much what's on a member's profile, but in their responses to newbie threads that is the better indicator.

Originally Posted by gugi

Sure, I think that would work for some people.
Although I think it's usually not so much what's on a member's profile, but in their responses to newbie threads that is the better indicator.

I think this is also a great point, because I can count on my hand the number of times I've looked at someone's profile for something.

That said, the reason I think this would be good for me is that it would give me a chance to think through some of the difficulties I had, and try to put myself back in my own shoes when I started out. Then I could put all of those things down on paper and have them to look at from time to time (kind of like a journal I suppose). I see it as a way to leverage the useful info that can come from such an introspective (and retrospective) view, in order to be more helpful and empathetic in answering people's questions.

Originally Posted by kaiyen

Jeremy - wow, really? I would find someone contacting me randomly off the map kinda creepy. I will take a look at it again, then. thanks.

Gugi - thanks. I will try to find someone willing to take my messages and help me out :-).

It really depends who you're talking to... Some people would find it creepy.. I would, personally, be flattered if somone viewed me as knowledgeable enough to mentor them...

And the majority of the guys here are nice enough that, if you ask politely, they'll at least have you over for one visit and point you in the right direction with stropping, supplies and technique... They're all great guys here