folding knives, where to go?

Somehow this sr hobby has also moved me toward folding knives. I am particularly interested in french models. Not hard to follow with the signficant following in sr's as a result of Thiers and others. But I don't seem to be able to make a connection to anything even resembling SRP. Is that because it doesn't exist, or I'm just not as good at google as I should? I have been able to avoid the beginner mistakes in purchases as a result of the good assistance the forum has provided and would like to see about the same in the folding knife area. thanks for listening!

I like this folding knife forum the best: Forum Index - Knifeforums.com - Intelligent Discussion for the Knife Enthusiast - Powered by FusionBB
Many others are dominated by mall ninjas discussing the survival attributes tactical knives, but guessing rather than testing...

For actual cutting performance, Opinels are hard to beat (and even French).
Opinel Knives SuperStore | 200 Knife Models | 26 Opinel Categories

There's a host of forums I belong to a few.

Personally I like BladeForums.com they have a tendency to stay on topic and have decent moderation.
Also British Blades :: Custom Knife Making is very good. They're close to the french (since you like french knives) and have a good appreciation for the non-tactical knife because of the british knife laws.

There's JerzeeDevil Forums but that's a bit more aimed towards the tacticool variety.

And then there's the dutch ones I visit: Messenforum.nl • Forumoverzicht (which has a small international, english speaking, section and most of the members are fluent/semi-fluent in english as well. And weapons.be which is a belgian (dutch speaking) forum which in regards to language is the same as messenforum.nl but aimed and run a little more by custom makers rather than production collectors.

If you're german speaking (or don't mind google's translations) then you might also like www.messerforum.de

Personally I'm not much a fan of knifeforums.com but to each his own and there's certainly a LOT of information to be found there.

As for french knives. The above mentioned Opinel is the best bang for the buck knife (I think possibly in the world).

And the Le Theirs and Lagioule knives are also awesome. Take care with lagioule's though. It's not a protected name but rather the name of a knife type. You can get really cheap lagioule.....that are complete crap (from for instance some mass factory in Pakistan) and very expensive very nice lagioule's (costing several hundreds of dollars) and everything in between.