this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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WetShaving

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This is a community of enthusiasts, hobbyists and artisans who enjoy a traditional wet shave: brush, soap, and safety or straight razor. We are a part of the WetShaving community found on Reddit, Discord, and IRC.

New subscribers welcome!

Please visit our wiki, which is always and forever a work in progress.

Check out these alternative front-ends for this server:

https://gem.wetshaving.social - a nice modern interface

https://old.wetshaving.social - designed to look like old.reddit.com

Our sister Mastodon instance is https://wetshaving.social.

Community Rules

Rule 1 - Behaviour and Etiquette
Rule 2 - Content Guidelines
Rule 3 - Reviews and Disclosure
Rule 4 - Advertising
Rule 5 - Inappropriate Content
Rule 10 - Moderator Discretion

founded 1 year ago
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Welcome to WetShaving Lemmy community! This is the place to ask beginner and simple questions. Some examples include:

  • Soap, scent, or gear recommendations
  • Favorite scents, bases, etc
  • Where to buy certain items
  • Identification of a razor you just bought
  • Troubleshooting shaving issues such as cuts, poor lather, and technique

Please note these are examples and any questions for the sub should be posted here.

Don't forget to have a look at the wiki, too.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Little question I was asking myself: what would you think about having an SOTD thread and a questions thread per week instead of doing it daily?

At least while we are in the single digit submissions per day?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's the plan with Reddit going forward? Will most users be staying over there?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It seems that way to me, at least for the time being

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Interesting. I said I wouldn’t, but I’m now begrudgingly considering a return to Reddit myself. I liked the idea of moving here, but there’s just not the community engagement I was hoping for. Not just in wetshaving, but all the communities I was in.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, I get that.

I'm just thinking that the enshittification of Reddit has started, and once started it won't stop. The Reddit investors want their return on their investment and that's that. I don't blame them, but I have no illusions about a rosy future.

In the meanwhile, I want to give this alternative a real chance.

My question goes in that direction, too. I think this may feel more like a community with the weekly threads, which would hopefully feel less empty.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

That’s a good point. I could see having weekly threads make it feel like less of a ghost town around here. I’d be on board with giving it a try.

Regarding the enshittification, I sadly agree. Now that I’ve been gone a little while, I’m wondering if I’ll notice any differences when I go back, or if it’s a slower process.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm just thinking that the enshittification of Reddit has started, and once started it won't stop.

Maybe, but network effects are powerful. Elon Musk, despite his best efforts, has not succeeded in driving away people from X-twitter, and I don't believe that reddit will proceed as radically. There will be more adds, but the frog will be boiled slowly. I don't see myself going back to reddit, but it's more because I'm ideologically committed (I have been using exclusively Linux for 20+ years).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, they are powerful indeed. The fediverse is the first alternative I've seen that has (at least in my mind) the potential to create a stronger network effect that any walled garden, though.

I have been using exclusively Linux for 20+ years

Cheering from a Debian work station

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It’s not a “bustling metropolis” but I think it hasn’t really had enough time to blossom. And I’ve been busy with life so I’ve not been contributing as I would normally either.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Good question. Daily SOTD threads would help worbx (assuming he still collects data, and assuming the threads help him). Weekly questions thread is a good idea. I can easily remove the show and tell threads.

A weekly questions thread would also be more appropriate for pinning, which is a manual process for now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I have always wanted Reddit WS to change to a longer duration for the smaller question auto-threads. So I'm all for a weekly question thread.

And yep, keep the SOTDs daily. fine with me.

I use an app to take the shave data that I' ve typed in and render it for either Youtube or reddit. I recently added lemmy and mastodon sections as well, so I don't mind continuing to post in all of them.

However, if I only have a discussion in one, and then later want to find it, it's a bit of a hassle to figure out where the discussion was.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I think this is a good balance. Keep SOTD threads, but make the questions weekly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hah, thanks, yeah, I'm still around. Just busy enough that I haven't written up the next reports. The daily SOTD threads help because not everyone puts a date in their SOTD posts. A lot of them are backdated after the fact; people may go a week or so without posting then post a bunch all at once. Daily threads mean that's organized in such a way that I can count someone as an every day shaver even if they didn't actually post every day, on that day.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Good to know

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Also, thanks for making the questions thread weekly! Otherwise I might have missed this entirely since I'm not on the community every day anymore. :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Clarification question: the SOTD thread would remain daily? With AA gone, we should have 10-ish posts there, so I don't think it would be useful to regroup these.

It's true that we haven't had any real question for a while, and I think once a week might give us a chance to have some posts on it.

And I'm not sure whether we want Free Talk Fridays and show and tell threads.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I agree. Yes to SOTDaily, no to free talk, show'n'tell. etc.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

A weekly thread makes sense to me, as the userbase is small (but hopefully growing).

It also means I don't have to wait for the bot to post the threads :P

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I think that a weekly questions thread makes sense and I agree with @[email protected] that daily SOTD threads would help maintain consistency with worbx's statistics.

My guess is that most people will adapt to Reddit's change in policy by finding new phone apps, or living with more restrictions in their subs. I think that this will take time for the community to see, but there are significant benefits that come from an open system. I'm not sure I fully get the Fediverse advantages yet, but I'm very interested to see what can be leveraged there.

I'll ask a related question in this thread.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We could just do a combo free talk friday/daily question thread on friday. Same with the show and tell day. When it gets too busy and cluttered it could always be changed. Daily SOTD posts are nice a week would be a bit tough to sift through. I am using Memmy on IOS and it works very well, similar to Apollo for reddit. All of this stuff is displaying excellent for me. I really do appreciate the work you guys are putting in so thank you very much.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

A weekly combo thread is an interesting idea.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Also pinging @[email protected] and @[email protected], who post regularly here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is easy for me to post to r/Wetshaving and to this community, and I have a simple process for posting to Mastodon as well. What's not easy for me is managing activity across these sites. Assuming that someday much of r/Wetshaving will want to move here, is there an easy way to ease that transition through an app that does consolidation of both Reddit and Lemmy?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I believe that you should be able to follow a Lemmy community in mastodon, but I don't think that reddit allows apps to integrate (easily or at all) with the fediverse. There are apps like geddit that don't use the reedit API, but that means it's read only wrt reddit, and it's not meant as a fediverse client.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you. I've looked around and haven't found anything. Since Lemmy looks like reddit but exists in the fediverse I hoped that someone would write an app that supported both the reddit and fediverse APIs to provide a consistent UI for those who want to exist in both seamlessly.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's unlikely that anyone will write an app using reddit's API, because this is a huge financial risk (the blackout was about this).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You are probably right.

I am aware of Reddit's change in policy that went into effect in July. $12,000 for 50 million API requests and free for "non-commercial accessibility apps" (Reddit's term). Since Reddit is a for-profit business and is owned by a company (Advance Publications) that wants to be publicly traded, this all makes sense to me. 50 million API requests is probably a pretty high bar to meet for an app that facilitates a move from Reddit to the Fediverse, and if the app received non-commercial status it would be fine. And an app could use a subscription policy to cover API costs, which some of the Reddit apps have moved to.

From a practical standpoint, I don't see this as a "huge financial risk". I see it as a solvable problem. I don't think there's enough obvious benefit to motivate a developer to expend the effort, however.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I see it as a solvable problem. I don’t think there’s enough obvious benefit to motivate a developer to expend the effort, however.

I'm not quite sure about that. I'm missing something, because you should be right, but the effort is already expended, yet still many reddit apps have shut down rather than switching to a subscription model. There was no technical change to the API. For example sync for Reddit and sync for Lemmy could be the same app and you just pay if you want to use the Reddit part, but that's not the way the devs decided. They preferred writing off their investment into the Reddit API.

I find this confusing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I find this confusing.

As do I. It comes across to me as more of an idealistic choice than a pragmatic one.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

AFAIK, the changes for API usage were announced on very short notice (less than a month), the main developper of one of the main apps was treated as a lier by the reddit CEO, and there was neither any trust or time to test new usage and to work out pricing.

Since the price for API usage seemed to have been designed to kill off 3rd party apps, most app developers preferred to shut down immediately, rather than to try and make things work in the short run -;if their pricing for their apps was off, they might have gauge financial problems, and if somehow it would have worked out, reddit could have raised fees anytime.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

main developper of one of the main apps was treated as a lier by the reddit CEO, and there was neither any trust or time to test new usage and to work out pricing.

I understand. I read the Apollo developer's comments on this situation. I don't recall if he was treated unprofessionally, but I remember that the pricing structure was just untenable in his view because his API transaction volumes were so high.

Since the price for API usage seemed to have been designed to kill off 3rd party apps

I obviously don't know what the Reddit folks were thinking, but all of the information in all of the subs on Reddit is a valuable asset. It makes sense from a business perspective to want to optimize revenue/cost for that asset. I'm certain Reddit management traded the benefit of that revenue against loss of users and loss of third-party support. At the moment, their gamble seems to have paid off, but it's very early yet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s been a busy summer. I have not paid any attention to new products. Is there anything note worthy or exciting you have seen or are looking forward to trying out?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Maggard just stocked Barrister & Mann - Lavender, Interrupted. While it's not available in soap or aftershave, the frag is one of my favorites. Niche, but not weird. Strong, but not overpowering. Relatively uni-sex, but masculine enough.

Other than that, I'm the same as you. I'm focused on finishing tubs of soap, not buying more, although I have started to get the itch to buy some tried-and-true scents from Chiseled Face. I got samples of Bespoke #1, Sherlock, and Topanga Fougere recently and they're all great. Bespoke and Topanga come from the LASSCO line, which he just started making in his Chiseled Face soap base.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I have never been disappointed by B&M. I’m a fan of florals so this sounds like something I could get into.

I keep seeing Moon soaps which has a couple scents I’ve been interested in mostly Union and Bixby sound appealing to me.

I haven’t tried any Chiseled Face soaps yet and I see that top of the chain has Topanga Fougere in stock that sounds like something I may enjoy.

Thank you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@[email protected] @[email protected]

Now that the thread is weekly, could we have it pinned? It starts wandering quite far down...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I pinned it yesterday, but only at the "community" level. It's now pinned at the "~~instance~~ local" level, so no matter where you're browsing it's right there at the top (assuming you're browsing sub.wetshaving.social directly, and not via another instance).

Benefit of pinning at the instance level - it's always there so as new questions come in, they'll be noticed and answered.

Downside - it's always right there at the top!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I see, I didn't know there's different levels of pinning 😅

FWIW, on Jerboa, the first level of pinning didn't seem to have any effect - now I see it on top 👍

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

yes, good point!