Thread: Nothing against the Barbers

Originally Posted by AFDavis11

Kevint,

Going back over your post I get the sincere view that because you shave fewer people and don't have to use a barber hone that you can achieve a single shave better than the tradesmen. I follow that logic pretty well.

I think my perspective is that in general barbers were better because they shaved so many people and had so many nearby resources for support.

The other thing that hits me is that a big difference between the hobbiest and the professional is that you get paid to do it. I think getting paid for it forces you to attain a higher level of quality.

I'm not sure they had so many resources. In the big cities perhaps, but here in the US things remained rather rural / small town for quite sometime. Perhaps you mean something different.

I was suggesting that we in general can do better without the constraints of customer satisfaction, wage earning, and etc. There sure is a lil hubris in my comments- call me an excited newbie. A barber sharpens to shave. I shave to sharpen. It's a fun way to occupy oneself. If I were only interested in shaving I think I would bail out of the forum and go on with my life after I became competent, ie about 100 posts 3 months

i am going to get more barber shaves. i meant to go much sooner, but was too psched about doing it myself to see what had changed since i always change things.

Originally Posted by BeBerlin

Since the thread has been hijacked already, I shall cut in here as well.

First, thanks to you and your fellow old hands for providing the forum. It is excellent. However...



When I switched from DE shaving to straights, I first came to B&B. They site is better optimised for search engines, and they have this seemingly wonderful illustrated tutorial for beginners. In hindsight, that set me back by about two months, but life is a bitch.

Now then, SRP has undoubtedly the most knowledge anywhere on the web. But it is utterly dis-organised. Coming back to Bruno's point about vocal multi-posters: A lot of time and effort here is spent re-iterating what has been said many times before. That may be a design decision, but it will not further the cause of this forum.

Why? Because the regulars (as you may want to call the experienced users with lots of postings) have reached a level of experience that cannot be reached other than by several years of experience in dealing with all aspects of straight shaving, honing in particular.

That may also explain the exit factor. For an average visitor to this forum, a few months will suffice to gather the knowledge necessary to obtain satisfactory shaves. They may even decide to keep sending off their dulled razors to a honemeister, rather than spend time and money buying hones and learning the skill. I decided to learn to hone my own razors, but the money factor was considerable (again, many thanks to Joe, Simon and Ivan for their tremendous support), and I have only begun to learn the skill.

Coming back to knowledge management (and at the end of the day, that is what this discussion will boil down to, like it or not):

1. Forums are excellent for a quick exchange of information. They are bad for presenting existing knowledge.
2. Wikis are good for aggregating, and refining, knowledge.
3. IRC (aka "The Chat") is good for communication and exchanging ideas.

Courtesy of Dave's excellent, and outstanding, work here, all three options are available. Unfortunately, though, only the forum is used to its full extent, and beyond. The result is that a lot of energy is spent paraphrasing known truths (not least because newcomers are not offered a quick and dirty way to straight shaving other than your DVD (which is, of course, phenomenal, but takes some time to arrive in a beginner's inbox).

Interestingly, there recently was a discusssion on #srp whether pointing people towards the Wiki would result in a decrease of "familiarity" in the forums. Personally, I do not believe that will be the case. But it will mean a certain change in the tone of the forum. Whether that is condecension, as another poster in this thread suggested, is entirely up to the recipient of the message. I come from a Unix background, where RTFM has always been considered a perfectly acceptable response to a stupid question. And yes, I believe that any question that can be answered by google is inherently stupid, because it is a waste of resources (point in case: writing time available to SRP regulars).

Now then, where was I? Ah yes, the Wiki issue. The next logical step for SRP would be to turn that well of wisdom that the forum is into an easily accessible encyclopedia of straight razor shaving. The Wiki has been online for several months. Has anything happened? Not at all. If it were not for a few heroic characters like Bjørn or Lee, it would still be devoid of any meaningful content.

And that is exactly where the problem lies. You guys can spend months and years discussing the advantages of a Coticule with slurry over the other latest honing hype, but it will simply not make any difference whatsoever to the outside world. You are, in a manner of speaking, the earth lovers of shaving. Your problems are becoming as esoteric as your solutions. But you are losing contact with beginners in a way that will effectively cut you off from the personnel resources required to take this site beyond what it currently is. You will need more writers, and editors in particular, if you want to achieve that. And neither The Conversation, nor the umptienth gun thread, nor another discussion on whether barbers were better in the Middle Ages, the Wild West, or when Lynn Abrams was young (whichever happened first) will help attract that target group to this forum.

Did I mention that I totally love this place? If not, I do. Despite the above paragraphs.

ahh an activist.

Ummm.. BeBerlin, I'm not sure what you said (I think it was a comment on site organisation, reiteration of old threads, and people leaving? I've interjected in a couple of places below.

Originally Posted by BeBerlin

Since the thread has been hijacked already, I shall cut in here as well.

First, thanks to you and your fellow old hands for providing the forum. It is excellent. However...



When I switched from DE shaving to straights, I first came to B&B. They site is better optimised for search engines, and they have this seemingly wonderful illustrated tutorial for beginners. In hindsight, that set me back by about two months, but life is a bitch.

Now then, SRP has undoubtedly the most knowledge anywhere on the web. But it is utterly dis-organised. Coming back to Bruno's point about vocal multi-posters: A lot of time and effort here is spent re-iterating what has been said many times before. That may be a design decision, but it will not further the cause of this forum.

I've spend a lot of time on a number of forums (different interests) and I find this one quite well organized. There is the newbie's corner which I see as a sort of "common area". Think of it as the "general discussion" area. then there are the "basic whatever" sections and further the "advanced whatever" sections. I think that works great although I'd suggest renaming the "newbie's corner".

Why? Because the regulars (as you may want to call the experienced users with lots of postings) have reached a level of experience that cannot be reached other than by several years of experience in dealing with all aspects of straight shaving, honing in particular.

Ahhh, do not equate lots of postings to a level of experience that cannot be reached other than by years of experience. Lots of postings simply means lots of postings. Yes, it's true that most highly experienced members here also have lots of postings but having lots of postings does not imply a high level of experience. I've also noticed that some (many?) of the most experienced members don't post a lot -- to be expected and it's not a bad thing.

That may also explain the exit factor. For an average visitor to this forum, a few months will suffice to gather the knowledge necessary to obtain satisfactory shaves. They may even decide to keep sending off their dulled razors to a honemeister, rather than spend time and money buying hones and learning the skill. I decided to learn to hone my own razors, but the money factor was considerable (again, many thanks to Joe, Simon and Ivan for their tremendous support), and I have only begun to learn the skill.

Not sure of your point here. There will be an exit factor to any focused interest forum. There is the novelty factor where people jump into something like this and then lose interest, some (as you say) are only interested to a basic level and "good enough" is as far as they want to go. Everybody reaches their own level of interest and either exits, lurks or levels off at some participation level. Often it's the case that the most "experienced" will taper off considerably and only occassionally participate in some very focused topics or interests.

Coming back to knowledge management (and at the end of the day, that is what this discussion will boil down to, like it or not):

I don't think so... but you're trying to steer it that way

1. Forums are excellent for a quick exchange of information. They are bad for presenting existing knowledge.

I disagree here. I think it's dependent on the presentation skills of the presenter.

Courtesy of Dave's excellent, and outstanding, work here, all three options are available. Unfortunately, though, only the forum is used to its full extent, and beyond. The result is that a lot of energy is spent paraphrasing known truths

Is that a bad thing? There are no qualification tests to join. New members will ask. There will always be slightly older members more than willing to impart their new found knowledge. There will always be senior members (and those very experienced members) that enjoy answering those questions over and over again for the constant flow of new people. It will always be the case that the forum is the most used part of a site like this. Simply due to geographics and time shifting. You post, you come back later.

Interestingly, there recently was a discusssion on #srp whether pointing people towards the Wiki would result in a decrease of "familiarity" in the forums. Personally, I do not believe that will be the case. But it will mean a certain change in the tone of the forum. Whether that is condecension, as another poster in this thread suggested, is entirely up to the recipient of the message. I come from a Unix background, where RTFM has always been considered a perfectly acceptable response to a stupid question. And yes, I believe that any question that can be answered by google is inherently stupid, because it is a waste of resources (point in case: writing time available to SRP regulars).

Nothing wrong with pointing people towards the Wiki. The tone will not change. There will always be some willing to answer directly as well as those who point to the Wiki (or both). Some people will scour the Wiki first, some won't.

Now then, where was I? Ah yes, the Wiki issue. The next logical step for SRP would be to turn that well of wisdom that the forum is into an easily accessible encyclopedia of straight razor shaving. The Wiki has been online for several months. Has anything happened? Not at all. If it were not for a few heroic characters like Bjørn or Lee, it would still be devoid of any meaningful content.

Human nature. Is it easier to give the single quick answer for the 1,000th time or take a lot of time to do a Wiki presentation to take care of the next 1,000... Also see comment on presentation skills above. Very few are blessed with the ability to do a Wiki presentation when they are capable of an involved thread discussion.

And that is exactly where the problem lies. You guys can spend months and years discussing the advantages of a Coticule with slurry over the other latest honing hype, but it will simply not make any difference whatsoever to the outside world. You are, in a manner of speaking, the earth lovers of shaving. Your problems are becoming as esoteric as your solutions. But you are losing contact with beginners in a way that will effectively cut you off from the personnel resources required to take this site beyond what it currently is.

In this I think you're wrong. I think I'm an example. I'm a newbie. Maybe not your average newbie since I've shaved for years with a shavette type of straight, and I'm an engineer and pretty analytic, and I'm obsessive compulsive... but I'm a newbie. Way too often I've read "everyone knows" used as a basis for some more advanced topic. Then I go search for the "everyone knows" part and all to often it's built on "everyone knows". Then there are esoteric discussions like this one that I find fascinating. If there wasn't this level of discussion then I probably wouldn't be here long.

I'm closely following that thread on "Tapeing the EDGE"where a few have implied that "everyone knows that a full hollow flexes with facial contours or skin". Really? how much? and "everyone knows that it's more comfortable". So I got the impression that everyone accepted the statement that as the blade loses width it loses it's flex and it becomes less comfortable or at least shaves very differently. I was thinking maybe it was because the bevel angle changed? but the discussion strayed away from any facts or numbers because "everybody knows". So I think you need the esoteric discussions at one end to support the base at the other end, and visa versa.

You will need more writers, and editors in particular, if you want to achieve that. And neither The Conversation, nor the umptienth gun thread, nor another discussion on whether barbers were better in the Middle Ages, the Wild West, or when Lynn Abrams was young (whichever happened first) will help attract that target group to this forum.

It attracted me. (but I can accept that I may not be the desired target group )

Originally Posted by AFDavis11

Extreme romaticism. The average SRP whisker wiper is still posting questions on how to hone.

Can't believe I am taking the bait.
I think the argument that the enthusiast are better is because we never stop striving to learn, never stop asking questions and never stop arguing these arguments. I have no doubt the best shaver ever was not from our times. But I think there are many in this group that could out shave an old time barber. At least on their own face. But that's the real difference, they are pros at shaving others, SRP are pros at shaving ourselves.

Don't forget that those old time barbers shaved their own faces too! The argument works both ways round, IMO.

Regards,
Neil

My mileage varies. Often I just coast along but sometimes I stick my foot on it

Friday I had a horrible shave: I thought I'll never say another thing online. (I'll only prove myself wrong)


yeah right. Yesterday was immaculate again. Now don't run off and mythologize me because I'm beardless