NEW WETSHAVERS...ARE WE MISSING THEM

[ThePossum]

Thanks Vince for updating the site. Have not had time to really work my way through it but seems like a very welcome change in format. Hopefully we will be able to attract some new members. And also keep up with the usual informative posts in all the forum from a great bunch of guys.

[drmoss_ca]

If you want to tell anyone they can join have them read this post, please.

Chris

[SharpSpine]

Thanks to Vince, Dr. Chris, & all contributors for bringing about this change. I look forward to seeing how things progress & like the changes so far. Hopefully all the archives will move w/out any difficulties.

[beartrap]

I can't believe I am actually posting here. Glad you "worked out" registration problem. Hello everyone!

[drmoss_ca]

Welcome, Steve!

Chris

[Thalay Sagar]

Welcome aboard, Steve.

[Craig_From_Cincy]

Welcome to Shave My Face Steve!

[ateace]

I've been following this thread with interest, unaware that it was difficult for new members to join SMF.
Thanks to Vince, Chris and everyone else who made this upgrade possible.

The issue of a forum's culture is an interesting one. Ideally, it should be allowed to live and breathe with its membership.
While B&B has seen its membership grow, it has become "noisier". On the other hand, I think the mods there do a very good job at keeping things from
getting out of hand and the regular posters there chime in to do the same. I see it as going with the territory of having a large and growing member base.

I split my time between SMF and B&B and enjoy what each has to offer. SMF is definitely quieter than B&B, but there seems to be more quality than
quantity. That said, new members are crucial to the ongoing success of a forum like this and hopefully we'll start to see some new people joining up very soon.

[brothers]

Hi Steve. Thanks for your patience, my friend. Welcome to SMF!

[CMur12]

Welcome to our little community, Steve!

As with many other shaving forums, SMF has its own magic.

- Murray

[Ouchmychin]

I joined SMF because I got fed up with Gillette bringing out ever new and "improved" products at astronomical prices. When I discovered SMF by googling about it I learned about DE products and where to get them. I think Giovanni was my first source for blades. Wish he were still in the business. Then I got the fever and had to have a rotation on everything and so it went. I have started roasting green coffee beans and that hobby takes me away from here for extended periods at times. Maybe we could try to attract other members by finding ways to display ourselves to other iconoclasts googling to find friends.

[kingfisher]

I am a long-time lurker and very infrequent poster here at SMF, but am very active over at B&B.

While I can see the point that B&B has, perhaps, a few too many "me,too" type posts and maybe too many newbies who fashion themselves experts, it is certainly a livelier place than SMF. Amidst all the noise, there is a strong signal to be had. There are several posters over there that are truly DE history and identification experts, if nothing else. Additionally, new shaving products (software and hardware) are discussed fairly frequently, which is interesting to me.

I do believe that SMF has not been capturing much of the "newly converted" crowd, and I wonder how much of it was due to the difficulty in registering versus the concept that SMF was an "club" whose membership has already been established, if you know what I mean.

I enjoy both sites. I think this site could be more welcoming. For all its faults, B&B tends to be extremely inclusive, which is one of its strengths. I think SMF would do well to emulate B&B in this one particular aspect.

[rsp1202]

Well . . . I'll defer from quoting the Groucho Marx line about "clubs," but I've always felt that SMF is more welcoming than B&B, and without the cliques (my opinion, right or wrong) -- but there's no denying that B&B is a lively joint and offers scads of info for the wetshaver community to glom onto. I do lots of window-shopping (and selling) there.

[Craig_From_Cincy]

Hi Kingfisher,

Thanks for the feedback, and agreed on all points. Hopefully the new site will draw more new members and liven things at SMF up a bit.

[vferdman]

Hello, everyone. This is my very first post on SMF. I tried to sign up a year and a half ago when I first discovered shaving forums and wet shaving. I had the captcha problem not let me sign up. I sent emails to admins, etc. to no avail. So, I honestly decided that the sign up process was a very smart-ass and snobbish way of communicating to the world that SMF does not accept new members. So I stopped trying and singed up for B&B and TSN (The Shave Nook). It wasn't until yesterday that I read on one of the other two forums that SMF may have been compromised and now the sign-up process is working. I immediately signed up. I must admit that I was a bit ticked off at SMF initially as I truly thought it was a bunch of snobs not letting new members in. I am certain I am not alone in this. I am very glad that the issue with sign up process is fixed and the forum is not communicating this kind of negativity any more. I look forward to learning and contributing here. I enjoy the other forums, but as some have stated here, the signal-to-noise ratio can be low on B&B. I am also a member on one of the straight razor forums, though I have not progressed much in that part of my wet shaving journey. DE shaving is just too convenient and pleasurable.

I I have not seen any "introduction" threads, but I only just joined yesterday and it may be my omission. If so, I apologize for doing it here.

My short introduction:

I've been enjoying DE shaving for a year and a half and categorize myself as a no-nonsense shaver. My den is small by comparison to what I've seen out there. Three open comb DEs and two safety bar ones. That's my razor stable and I could easily get that down to one OC and one SB and be very happy.

I use mostly Italian soft soaps like Cella and and inexpensive sticks like Palmolive and Arko, but have enjoyed triple milled English soaps as well. I do not use cremes after having tried some. Just not my thing.

My brushes are mostly the ones I made myself by either restoring old handles with new knots or making my own handles and setting them with new knots. At the moment I mostly use (Omega) boars, but have and enjoy a spectrum of sizes in TGN two band finest knots set into various handles. My only factory made brushes are Simpson Case, Simpson Wee Scot Semogue 1470 boar and B&B Essentials Boar (by Omega). The rest are my own restores and custom made handles.

I am not a big fan of aftershaves and frags, so I keep none. I use alum deodorant stick and non-alcoholic witch hazel as post-shave treatment with great results. My routine has settled in and it has been a while since I got a bad shave. The worst case scenario is a DFS, but that rarely happens. I shave every other day and get a BBS every time.



Again, sorry if this is not the appropriate place for the introduction. When I learn to find my way around here a bit better I'll post it in a more appropriate place. Just wanted to give feedback about the effect broken sign in process had on me (and possibly others) and give a quick background about my DE shaving.

Thanks to all who worked to fix the sign up process to this place.

--
Vladimir

[dosco]

Vladimir:
Glad to have you aboard. Welcome.

Cheers-
Dave

[Craig_From_Cincy]

Welcome to SMF Vladimir, great to have you aboard!

[gsgo]

A welcome to all of the newcomers, glad that you are finally getting through.

SMF has been a pleasurable forum to be part of for the past five years and what set the forum apart was the quality of the posts versus the quantity. While I do spend some time reading over at the other forums SMF remains the location I have prefered to do my posting. Unintentionally, a clubby atmosphere developed simply due to the familiarity we have all gained with regular communication amongst ourselves and with the few newcomers who got in despite the sign up problems.

While I think the increase in activity is a great thing for the forum, I hope we can maintain the same spirit in our conversations and discussions about our hobby.

So glad to be hear and looking forward to the next five years!

[brothers]

Hi Vladimir. It's really good to have you among us here, and I'm certainly looking forward to your future participation.

[drmoss_ca]

And all the time you felt you couldn't join, there was a thread entitled "If you want to join SMF..." as a sticky in the General forum. I have responded to all e-mails asking me to create an account during our difficulties with the captcha. I don't think Vince will object to me summarising the problem we had had until this last week. SMF was started in response to the fact that another shaving forum on MSN, long since dead, was owned by a vendor and said vendor had, umm, reservations about positive reviews of products he did not sell. Consequently we have a culture here of being non-commercial, and have strict rules for the roles that vendors have here. One of our two founders felt very differently about those things and left to make a commercial, for-profit site, and the other stayed, but eventually lost his enthusiasm for all things shaving. The remaining owner (shall we call him, say, Vince?) continued to pay all the bills but didn't take part. Nothing wrong with that, but eventually our installation of forum software became dated, and then it could no longer cope with the spam bots. We closed self-registration when we were getting around 12 per minute spam registrations. Even I can't delete that many and perform my day job at the same time. Nonetheless, anyone could join, but simply had to send me an e-mail. I had no way of promulgating that information other than by posting it up here as a sticky, so that's what I did.
Recently, our owner emerged to update the software, and with a new version of the captcha we went down to about 12 spammers registering per hour. Fortunately the AI of spambots is on a par with that of their owners and they can't yet cope with a simple but relevant question and answer captcha. Since this was started we have had no spam registrations as far as I can tell. Even so, I still do a whois on the IP of each new registrant, which might be a new manifestation of PTSD that will appear in the DSM VI. We are currently feeling all warm and fuzzy towards him for getting around to doing this and proving that he is a generally splendid kind of chap.
So, no exclusionary or snobby policy. Simply a technical problem explained by the fact we don't make money here, and are dependent on the generosity of our owner. Clubbiness? Absolutely! The best there is, and you will be welcome to join in and decide for yourself if you like it. Should we try to resemble B&B? Why would we? It already exists, and does so simply because we didn't want to be that way. B&B is very, very good at being B&B. SMF always was something different to that kind of commercial enterprise, and always will be. I hope you will find the atmosphere friendly and informative as we have no intention of excluding anyone at all (barring vendors who advertise outside the Shopping forum - Grr!) So read, learn, post, educate us and enjoy yourself here!

Chris