Shaving with a straight razor is actually simple. So much so, that all the required information for any beginner, except the brain damaged ones, would fit nicely into a 20 page Beginners Guide to Straight Shaving. But, it is in the nature of drug dealers shaving forums to get beginners hooked because most of the shaving forums are waging penis size turf wars against each other, and fighting for silly titles like "the biggest", or "the most popular", or "the most frequented" shaving forum. Bollocks to that, I say. For me, the goal of a forum should be to come up with novel ideas, discuss them, refine them and make them publicly available.

Instead, what we are getting is something like SRP's series of so called "Beginners Tips", a collection of sciolisms in semi-broken English with far too many exclamation marks. I have so far refrained from commenting on them because, in all fairness, what little information they contain is still a whole lot more than what other forums provide. Yet the following remark really, really annoyed me: "So I looked at many of the conversations and the one thing that stood out was the huge amount of information thrown at the beginner much of which is contradictory..." Because its underlying misconception is not only mind-numbingly wrong, but also highly indicative of the way allegedly experienced members mistreat beginners.

So let's dissect this tip piece by piece first.

• "Why are so many threads filled with contradictory info all aimed at the beginners???" That is a simple one to answer. It is because the moderation fails to disallow such information. There is an FAQ for a reason. And indeed, it has an entry describing a good starter razor. 
• "Hi I am new to this, what razor should I buy????" Even assuming that the author's ? key got stuck instead of insinuating that beginners suffer from brain haemorrhage, the correct answer to this question is, "RTFM". Contrary to popular belief, there are stupid questions. In fact, you will rarely find any smart questions in a shaving forum, because most online forums represent the intellectual capacities of any given society - and most people are unable to formulate smart questions. Whether you call them lazy, confused, in need of attention, or maliciously obtuse, their contributions amount to line noise.
• "First off everyone will tell you what they think is the best razor, "In Their Honest Opinion" now comes the diversity of the membership" Right. And yet wrong. If you want to be the leading online source for such information, you had better make sure that it is accurate. Opinions vary, and the lack of a reputation system makes it impossible for a beginner to differentiate between someone with a lot of knowledge and some sad anorak with logorrhea and an ego problem. So, well, no beginner wants everyone's opinion - they want the peak of a bell curve. And behold! that is what the FAQ entry contains.
• "So to you beginners... the tip of the month, is to ask your question with as many details as possible, then narrow down the responses to the people that think like you do" An interesting idea. With a few hundred beginners each month, this approach would turn the beginners forum into a veritable sewer within a few days. Not to mention the resources required for answering the same question over and over again. Come to think of it, part of the current problem (the abovementioned contradictory information) is owed to the fact that the beginner/experienced user ratio is far too low to handle even the current flow of information. Which is why people who clearly lack the experience to give recommendations to beginners actually do give such recommendations. And that is not even mentioning the undercover vendors and their marketeering cronies trying to abuse these threads for their financial gain.
• Speaking of financial gain, the razor given as an example in the post is actually not what the FAQ recommends. So I started wondering why it was there to begin with. Applying Ockham's razor is particulary efficient if you are dealing with vendors. And of course this razor was for sale at the time the article was published.

I still remember the time when the Straight Razor Place was all about helping people, even by selling them equipment. Today it seems as though it was heading in the direction of the lesser shaving forums, where more and more people are offloading pieces of shaving kit for profit only. Somehow, this whole sad affair makes me think of the poem Recessional.