Thread: SR Shaving on the rise? How much?

Just curious if anyone has done any research on the number of people using straight razors.

This forum I think would be a great indicator to get an estimation. It would be interesting to know, for instance, how many members this forum has had each month since its inception. Has anyone got that info handy?

It would also be interesting to know the monthly member count for B&B and all of the other forums... although, I don't think an accurate assessment could be made by adding all of those numbers together as many people are members of more than one forum. Independent studies compared to each other could provide some good information, though.

It would be cool to see a line graph covering the last 5 years or so. If anyone has raw numbers for this forum, I could try to put together a graph.

Just a quick search of the site told me that in May '08 there were around 5K members of this site. Now it's more like 38.3K.

But... to quote Thebigspender from '08:

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Also remember that when you talk about site memberships as an indicator of interest and this is the case with all sites not just here, many join out of curiosity or a fleeting interest or think its just cool at the time and never again return. Of the 5000 members we have even including lurkers who do not post how many active members do we really have? The admins could answer that but my guess and its only a guess would be no more than 1000. That would still be a very respectible number. I remember when the membership number on the yahoo groups site passed 1000 and we thought that was a momentus occassion.

So I would stress that this research project would only be an estimation. It's better than nothing, though

You also have to take into account how many of the SRP "members" either gave up straight razors after trying or just joined because they had a passing interest in straight razors. There are also more than a few "members" who joined the site looking for a valuation on a straight razor that came in a box of junk at an auction and have no interest at all in collecting or using the razor.

Originally Posted by Theseus

You also have to take into account how many of the SRP "members" either gave up straight razors after trying or just joined because they had a passing interest in straight razors. There are also more than a few "members" who joined the site looking for a valuation on a straight razor that came in a box of junk at an auction and have no interest at all in collecting or using the razor.

Lol... I edited my post above 1 minute after your post here addressing this. I should stop editing now...

Hey Theseus, it's the Hypno-Toad (as opposed to The Psionic Frog, which I think sounds cooler), right?

This is a good question, is there a way for someone to make a criteria of on-line activity to distinguish active:non-active members? How about a way to discard extremely short-term active members (one-shot deals)? This would be interesting, though probably not a productive use for programmer's/mod's time.

Probably the best indicator is the number of new vendors of shaving equipment and contacting them and asking for number of folks buying each year (if they would give you that info). Going by numbers based on forum activity would be very inaccurate. There are many reasons people join a forum not to mention all the other factors previously discussed. Also there are many folks who use a straight who have always used one and have no affiliation with any sites and have no desire join anything. There are also people who collect razors by the thousands but don't use them

Originally Posted by AxelH

Hey Theseus, it's the Hypno-Toad (as opposed to The Psionic Frog, which I think sounds cooler), right?

Yep, it's the Hypno-Toad. The Psionic-Frog would be great too.

Tracking the number of new members, and active members here will be misleading in my opinion. While SRP used to be about the only straight razor shaving website, it has competition now. To get a realistic idea from membership, you would now have to poll all the major shaving sites.

I would think the best way would be to use Google search statistics.