Re: Why nothing about osteoscreen, Ru, T-flav, 6-bap and oth
Melvinpoorter said:
Why nothing about osteoscreen, Ru, T-flav, 6-bap and other topicals. There are a lot of interesting posts at hairsite. Some of these topicals seems to be a very good solution againts male pattern baldness. What do you guys think is the solution on the horizon?
The other guys replied pretty accurately to this already, but I just wanted to add to it. Over the past 4 years a lot of interesting theories have come out of hairsite, but we have watched people get worked up into a frenzy over them, putting all hopes and dreams into them, and even joining bandwagons that the clinically proven treatments are "useless" because of them. Might just be human nature, but things always get taken way too far on hairsite when it comes to theories and mystery concoctions.
It starts off as harmless research, or a hunch, and inevitably turns into a frenzy of multi-site posting enthusiasts ... which inevitably fizzles to a bunch of very angry people who felt "duped" 6 months later. It is a cycle that has repeated itself so many times now that we've considered it downright dangerous to those in need of help. This is no reflection on the website itself, nor the people who post there. I do believe its a reflection of a lack of structure and direction provided by the site ownership, but that is just an opinion. The point is, its dangerous to newbies who aren't educated. Why?
One newbie not too long ago stumbled upon hairsite and got mislead into putting his hopes (and hair) into the then-current fad. When he found out it was all a scam, or did not work, he attempted suicide. The news was all over the websites.
This is why I have chosen to adopt a much more careful approach to what we focus on at HairlossTalk. Doesn't make this site better than HairSite in any fashion. Just a different focus. It's true that the educated hair loss sufferer can and should have the right to research, and even try anything he or she wants, as an intelligent adult. The unfortunate risk is the newbies and the uneducated, who can be completely lead astray by even one week of overfocus on something like 6-bap.
Picture a new guy who knows nothing, popping onto HairlossTalk, popping right to the forums, and seeing nothing but 6-bap chat for 2 weeks. He literally won't hear one word about Propecia, and may go on his way knowing nothing about proven versus unproven, what really works versus what may or may not work, etc. I've seen this happen over there time and time again, and to me that's dangerous. Its dangerous because these sites exist primarily to educate the uneducated, and secondly to protect the public from the already massive amounts of scam artists out there with fake snake oil tonics to sell. That is why I made this site, at least.
If there was a way to build an inherent base knowledge of hair loss into everyone *FIRST* I think it would be safe to have forums that do nothing other than explore alternatives, but since we can't do that, we do try to keep the forums focused on educating the user with solid science instead.
Though there may be 10-30 "regs" who already know all there is to know about hair loss, and we may lose them to other more experimental sites, our web statistics show that there are literally 1,000-3,000 newbies who just lurk here
every day without ever posting. Because of those numbers, we know we must continually focus on basic education because this is the biggest need by web surfers, and is therefore the best service we can provide to our site visitors. Arming them with good solid science.
We are # 1 on Google for "hair loss". To assume that 90% of site visitors are scientifically educated enough to know all about DHT inhibitors versus growth stimulants, and clinically tested versus experimental, is just plain wrong. To cater to the minority is not logical, when you have a vast majority in need of basic understanding still.
Unfortunately, instead of being praised for this, we've always been heavily criticized (and even banned) for our stance on this topic. I think its a general misunderstanding of our motives, but nevertheless, we do what we gotta do.
As mentioned above, there is an "Unproven and Experimental Treatments" forum dedicated to exploration which you are welcome to post in. We felt that containing such topics to a separate forum was a good way to let all lurkers/newbies know that treatments they read about there, may not necessarily work, and thats really all we want to be sure of.
HairLossTalk.com
You wont hit any conflicts from the moderation there, because we put it there for a reason.