Topic: Ideas for improving local boards? (Read 634 times)

Thanks to all the suggestions I will read them all, summarize the important points and redrafted the topic.
The level of posts is getting better and I'm sure these tips will change the content a bit.
Lock it.

I think one idea is to create daily discussions in the local board. In this way, more and more users will interact with each other therefore the local board will slowly improve because of the day to day discussions made by the users in the said board.

To be honest, there are some local boards now that has only a few users that are active. I have observed that there are a few users that are posting in my local board. Now there is a campaign that accepts posts in the local board and that helps too in making the local board active. I think one reason why the some of the local boards are inactive or not that active is because the signature campaigns doesn't accepts posts from the local board so they are just spamming in different sections.

I just remembered back on mid 2017 when the ICO and their bounty campaigns being 'hype' thing, local board is full of spammers and bad posters. Hence, make most of signature campaign block local boards on their rules.
Time has gone, after merit system introduced and legit ICO campaign become more less than before and thats happening as well to most of members including those who active on local boards. Recently, i looking back to my local boards (bahasa indonesia) and what i can say is i can count how many people who being active there.
I don't know any idea or act to atleast to improve local boards but one thing for sure is we lack of re-generation, we know a safest place where newbie can start to making a post is on a local board, but there's only a few topics they can discuss, ask, share and whatnot.

Just want to share my experience. I have ever give 1 merit to newbie who had some decent post (not good or even super quality post) he suddenly pm'ed that he really thank to me to give him merit, he was desperated of where he can earn merit and even more he wanted some advice from me how good or bad the quality of his post ( i even only can make some decent post not a good one). For now what i can do might be only focused to give merit to some new rank member who atleast had a decent post or a proper one. By this, i hope it gives them an encouragement and confident to learn and learn more so later there will be a time where they become a good poster

Agree with you @Cryptovigi that to activate a local community is not an easy task but I can't agree that the effects of what we are doing are not the best and I will try to explain why.
I am lucky to be here on Bitcointalk for a long time and I have seen how our local board is evolving during all these years. Of course, the best judge will be @Malevolent our moderator because he is there almost from start and witnessed everything but I have seen too how much traffic we had in Polish board during these years.

Little more as one year ago, when I started my mega thread, the situation was really bad and there where almost no posts and discussions in the polish board. But today, I am happy when I visit our local section. There are plenty of new posts every day and many more high-quality threads. I see every week, more high ranked members coming back to our local section, to take part in discussions. What is even better a lot of new members tries their luck and writing skills starting new topics.

The polish local section was never crowded. I dare say, that it is almost as good, as in times of the highest crypto mania when it goes, to our section. Of course, when one looks at other boards of this forum, and at our small local community, could think that indeed, there is nothing going on but this section was always small and I am happy that we achieved such progress, only with few people. I just can't imagine what can happen, when all these new and old members stay with us or will be coming back more frequently.

I would like to take the opportunity and ask for additional merit source for our Polish forum, which is simply necessary. Our work will be forfeited if we can not reward the best posts with merits. There is a whole bunch of very good threads or even individual posts in our section, which are still not rewarded. It would be great if merit sources could visit our section from time to time and give few additional merits to support us.

I know that this is very difficult for merit sources to merit posts in a language they don't understand and this is why additional merit source is so important in the local section. We have only one source and he is not able alone to merit all posts in our section by himself. Additionally, another source is another person who has a different character, different tastes, other sense of humor and maybe even completely different political views or opinions on various matters and this is all very good because he will merit different type of posts as merit source number one. Quite a new group of people has a chance for merits.

The topic of the thread is: Ideas for improving local boards?
I answer: first and foremost, give the needy sections more merit sources.

My local board is a suitable too, but I joined the forum when this local board locked due to over shitshowing. I can call it as disadvantage for real constructive users. However, it is life, and I have to accept it. I don't think merit system treat unfairly between posts made in international (English) and in local boards. Merits always find good posts to come. Only abusements in international and local boards are different, with overwhelmed abusements in local boards. For such over abused boards, it is better to locked them all; because it is hard to convince such shit-showers change their posting habits. Even good users of their nations don't care to join such local boards, even it is their first languages.

Interestingly, I joined the forum and even did not know there are local boards. I joined and simply read post in English. I did not jump directly and find where is my local board. In general, it's not right way to join any forum, and jump directly to find local boards. Nowadays, English is essential thing to communicate, discuss, learn, and to survive. Sticking with local languages is very bad approach and should be changed.

People need to skim my previous post to get in touch with this.

The Indian Board is absolute shitshow when it comes to posting where there are far little posters and reputed members who literally post and have knowledge on what they are really posting. Most of them who posts in the Indian Boards are spammers who is either willing to increase their post count or just Brand New bot accounts created to promote thier shills and scams spreading all over the boards.

Benson was a good moderator a while back, and due to his inactivity and coinsecure problem he should have been removed by theymos. But the board (to be true) has very little entertaining and non-bot posters. It would be better if theymos deletes the Indian Board all the way. Good Posters like avikz, amishmanish,TheUltraElite,legendster,r1s2g3 and few others mostly sticks on-to the main boards and if they really post in the Indian Board, I would be one among the very few who constantly merits them. I have around 30-35 merits still sitting in my sMerit limit and I would be happy to give away to the good posters of the Indian Board. If the content is readable enough, I would be fairly distributing merits on everyone posting in the Indian Board.

The Indian Board always constantly falls into the most frustrating category with the majority of the posters having little to no knowledge in the bitcoin and just create an account here to promote their scams and shills.

I don't really know why there is a child board named Altcoins (India). The board is completely governed and controlled by fake translation spammers which has been brought to light in my post here. But even after posting those with necessary evidences, none of them have been tagged till now nor their fake translations have been trashed. Even the official rules translation is being done by automated translation tools in the Indian Board.

Including myself, I don't really need to just post in that bullshit board and waste my time talking nonsense. If theymos doesn't want the board to be good and to be controlled by spammers, why the board should exist? Better deleting the board completely will pave way for a better forum. Also appointing merit sources for Indian Board would be literally waste and leads to merit abusements.

P.S All my ideas to improve the board have been mentioned in the other post, it is up-to theymos to control the overflowing spams.

This is probably the best option or idea https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.50849408

We should let them do what they want to do and then if they came out wrong educate them. Ever wonder why they are ranked Newbies? Because they are the new comers. Some of them might have just come into the forum to get some knowledge too excited that they missed the rules. Better supply kindness and nourish them than to be harsh to them.

II have no objection when it comes to improving the quality of posts but letting them to create topics? Nah, I don't agree because things would be a total mess. I'm not saying that newbies don't have the right to open their own threads, what I only mean is that they should learn first even only these 2 things: 1) learn any stuffs involving to crypto world for the sake of having good content and 2) learn to weigh whether is it really appropriate to open a thread for such topic or not. If they learn these two basic things then there would be no problem, however, newbies are newbies so it's natural if it takes a lot of time for them to do so.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just worrying of future conflicts like tons of irrelevant or repeated discussions on our local boards once we encourage them. Instead of being helpful it's destroying our forum (once again). But anyway, I still believe that there are existing good newbies out there who are obedient and got a presence of mind.

It's difficult mission to improve local boards. Actually, some local boards like Philippines, Russia, Indonesia and few others is very active and probably need any improvement. It's probably because these countries have big population and lot of people interested in crypto. My country don't have dedicated board, just thread in Other languages & locations and I can say it's dead. There was only 2 posts made in 2018. Even when Bitcoin was at $20 000 things were same as now there. People just used other communication channels to discuss - social networks, some local boards. So - what I can do to improve our thread - talk to myself? Actually, I know enough Bitcointalk users from my country, but they prefer to discuss in English boards. It's a problem of country with small population - no matter what you will do, it's just impossible with limited number of people to compete with content written in English. There is even a probkem with books - not all popular books are being translated to our language because it's just not worth to do that and people are forced to read some books in English and other languages.
There is some ways how we can improve local boards, but I think it can have only minimal influence. If you see potential in your local board, try to be more active there, start some discussions, help other users and etc - it's important to play your own role before complaining about something. Having active Merit source in local board may help, but it's not key factor.
And public secret - probably many people aren't very active in local boards because most of sig campaigns/bounties aren't paying for posts in these sections. Now Cloudbet campaign is looking for local posters in their campaign - it will be interesting to watch results of this experiment. But there is one problem related with signature campaigns and local posts - if manager don't understand that language, it will be more difficult for hime to check quality of posts there.
And another thing - theymos can't find mods for some local boards - it shows that situation is really bad in some boards and it will be difficult to change something there.

A kind of community manager ? Sometimes I feel like a mother, an older brother, a cop, a garbage man. If I also need to be a community manager, being mod becomes a full-time job and in this case I will have to talk to Theymos about a pay increase .

The good content must be provided by everyone.

And I don't have exact figures, but ~95% of new users who post in the French section come for:
- A technical problem. And they don't come back once they have their answer.
- To promote their website or place their ref links. And they don't come back anymore or just to keep promoting their website.
- To make money. But they don't come back when they realize that airdrops don't pay any more or when they understand the ranking system.

Between all this, there are a few newbies who come, get interested and hang on, but it's still very very rare.

*let the merit distribution be more felt in the local board than it is at the moment and u don't mean it should be abused just judiciously distributed
*more learned my members be more active in there local board this can spore them to be more constructive

There are some reasons to keep users using local boards:
- Due to their limited English, so they feel unpretentious with their English, and don't have intention to improve, they will stick with local boards.
- Due to their dedication to help locals in local boards. They can help proficient English but they have interests to stick with local boards to help others with their knowledge and skills. However, those users actually join other boards, maybe to read only or even discuss.

There are some reasons from which users don't have interests to use their local boards:
- Spam: they feel tired of spam and shitposts, so they left their boards.
- Boring/inactive boards: They don't have interests to join boards that looks very inactive, then they left.

Consequently, to improve local boards, there are so many things to do, and that can not be reached with only innitiatives from staffs, mods, merit sources or limited outstanding users. It depends on all members in local boards. When users stop spamming, and change their attitude of posting habits in their boards, to contribute more with their posts, their local boards will become more active, more interesting. It is the same what happened with bitcointalk.org, before merit system started, many users left due to terrible spamming, now they likely joined back or new users feel more interesting to join the forum (spamming almost elimimated).

With this sort of requirements, you can only force someone to increase the quantity of posts in local board. But remember, quality is needed so that newbies in local, can learn something.
You can't expect quality (in most case) through paid posting. Unless someone is interested, it's not possible to increase the activity in local.
Some people don't participate in local because sometimes they feel they need to hide something, protect their privacy. This can be another reason.

I may have a ridiculous nightmare if our Board turns out to be the same, I hope before this year ends, my Board together with the non active Local Boards will have its lively environment again even though Bitcoin has a low value compared on 2017.

Let's hope while doing our best.

(For now, been waiting for our Merit Source Approval)

Activating the local community is not an easy task. I know, because we have been trying to do this for several months together with several users of Polish local board. Initially, I was convinced that it was only a matter of the number of merits distributed on the local board, but after a few months, when we were able to definitely increase the number of merits, it turned out that this is not enough. We also tried contests for good posts, bitcoin predictions etc. but the effects are not the best. Fortunately, our involvement has had some effects and now regular posters on the Polish board are a few more but I still hope that they will be able to collect a much larger group.

In the case of the Polish local board, we also have this problem, that in Poland there is a local forum which gathers significantly more users, and a large part of those who are active on bitcointalk choose general boards.

In general, according to my own experience, activating the local community is a very difficult task, and requires the work of local moderators (but not in the sense of guarding the rules of the forum, spam removal, etc.) but those who will be involved in encouraging discussions, creating new topics and starting up and provide content that in a sense will persuade others to be active.

That could be possible, and its happening now (DarkStar already looks for a local poster on his campaign).

CLOUDBET SIGNATURE CAMPAIGN - LOCAL POSTER WANTED!

A great new campaign who looks for a local poster specifically on the local board of PHILIPPINES, INDIA, RUSSIAN, and FRENCH with a great bonus paying rate. This can help the local board to be more active, and this problem can slowly be resolve.

Google translate to English can give a rough overview about the post itself, so posts on the local boards can be checked more or less as easily as the english posts. Of course google translate can be tricky in connection with a few special languages, but the main languages are covered and the translation is good usually

Appoint the local moderators on priority that will definitely weed out the rubbish and appoint some merit sources in local board that will encourage the user to post some interesting and discussion worthy post.

Taking our local board as an example (Philippines local board), the lack of a merit source heavily influences the number of threads being created by newbies. Every now and then, there are noteworthy threads/guides being created but some lose the will to contribute due to a lack of incentives given.

I am very much aware that merits should not be the focal point on why people contribute to the forum but having that incentive would most likely affect the overall activity of our local boards. This will give them the extra boost and motivation to go the extra mile in exploring all the possibilities of helping one another.

By taking positive reinforcement as an example, employees in a company that understand both mission and vision of the company, know their priorities, and continue to strive higher would more likely contribute to the company more (incentive follows!).

DarkStar gave enough opportunity to improve local borad  (Fun). Anyway, local borad is important because, we need spread the word about bitcoin. And obviously we should improve it. I have not much suggestion, because may be question will riase why am I not active on local board. I already gave answer, and once again I want to say that I don't have local borad on my native language.

First thing is, we need increase awareness about local boa3d. Once I join first time then I wasn't aware there is local board for most of country. So this is one week point. Mist of newbies don't know use of forum from beginning, so it's normal that they are not aware about their local board.

Second thing is, quality posters and contributors should active on their native board. So people's will learn from them. Also newbies should raise questions what they don't know, so senior users could give them answers. So everyone should participate in order to improve local board.