"Gangrene is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies (necrosis)." [Wikipedia] It also describes the shaving scene well. In the beginning was a small group of people dedicated to a common cause. And the cause was straight razors. Information was scarce for those without access to proper libraries, and information on the internet was even scarcer.

More than 10 years have passed since then. Time for a look at the state of the shaving nation in detail. Where do we stand?

The forums

There are basically two types of forums: The good and the bad. They are all ugly, not just because they use stock issue software, more often than not vBulletin. But also because almost any forum will destroy what little relevant content it produces with its ability to actually force you to put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger.

The problem with most shaving related forums is that they are taken way too seriously, thus creating great potential for epic threads. This is typically the case when the moderators barge in to cleanse the epicness in the hope that people will believe it never happened. Which, in all likelihood, is sadly true. Forums are short lived by nature. They are the modern day equivalent of an open space in the middle of a decadent, overpopulated megacity that has no sewage system. There is a lot of noise, and dirt, but nothing worth preserving. The opposite would be a gymnasium. Let the results speak for themselves: Razors according to the self proclaimed world's leading forum, the Straight Razor Place, vs everything you actually need to know, according to Wikipedia. Even when forums attempt to amalgamate their knowledge, the result falls short of Wikipedia's.

So why bother at all? Why indeed. Having spent too much time in shaving forums, I still have not found a valid answer. Compared to, say, computers, there is actually very, very little to know about straight razors. Truth be told, SRP's Wiki is basically feature complete. In fact, it was when I left it. Creating and maintaining a Wiki is time consuming, and apparently SRP's 30,000 members do not have enough time, or interest, to improve it.

Instead, they prefer to produce endless repetitions of the same mind numbing Q&A threads. Call me cynical, but I created the article on travelling with a straight razor, and left it as a stub on purpose. There have been no meaningful changes to that page for more than a year. In the same period of time, lots of half digested nonsense that is completely irrelevant outside the US ("international straight shaving forum"? yeah, right...) has been posted in their forum cum storefront.

And if you think that SRP is a horrible site, you are wrong. It is far less horrible than its competitors. Badger and Blade's wiki is a pathetic joke which I refuse to even deign with a comment. See for yourself, if only for comic relief.

So what is the purpose of shaving forums? Quite honestly, I do not know. I have always regarded forums as a fluffed up alternative to mailing lists for the mentally challenged. Once someone came up with the means to post pictures in forums instead of galleries, the circle jerking began. Let us take a real life example, same site, different technical representation: SRP's Dovo fanboy club vs the respective Dovo category in the Straight Razor Database. In other words, forums stand for little content, lots of fanboys, and incredibly bad grammar. Which means that forums successfully combine all negative aspects of Web 2.0 with those of Glocktalk clubs.

There is one notable exception, though. The guys over at coticule.be have so far managed to keep the workflow aimed at actually producing content for their documentation sections. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they will manage to do that once more typical forum dwellers join their site. 

The blogs

While not immune to the various varieties of idiocy displayed in forums, blogs have one decisive advantage. As a reader, you typically do not wish to engage in a conversation with an author and its fanboys. It happens, of course, but far less often than in forums. Because blogs are private by nature. One guy, his razor, and a keyboard.

• Author Profile: Neurotic, irritated by spelling errors, married to sock puppet
• Typical Talking Point: How low has sunk our once lofty level of discourse.
• Representative Public Reply: OMG!!! You're gay!

Mantic59 keeps a nice list of shaving related blogs. Many of them are well worth a read. The absence of moderators apparently allows the authors to voice their opinions without first getting a full frontal lobotomy to fulfil the intellectual restrictions imposed upon forum posters in order to not jeopardise the commercial or vainglorious interests of the forum owners. Those opinions come at a price, of course: there is little to no peer review, so one should take them with a truck load of salt. But at least they give critical readers a starting point from which to venture on to further research.

Other sites

Sadly, that is almost all which straight razor researchers will get. But there are a few sites that are actually useful. I have been working on an article about straight razor research for some time now, and found these sites to be useful:

• Uniclectica's Straight Razor Manufacturers and Dates of Operation;
• Taylors1000's Straight Razor Manufacturers and Dates of Operation;
• Archivingindustry's list of German razor makers;
• A list of Solingen razor makers's marks.

Conclusion

10 years on, the so called shaving scene has achieved very little. A growing number of forums is indicative of the way the scene is heading. The typical straight razor veteran is either an attention whore, full of unwarranted self-importance, or in it for serious business. Finding relevant information among all the noise and exhibitionism is probably not much easier than in 2000. Too bad, really - more than 60,000 people organised in forums being unable to achieve something meaningful.