Topic: I'm thinking of running a topic starting contest for non-english speakers. (Read 558 times)

Thanks for all the concern about my possibly wasting my efforts. As I have said before, I don't have the same ambitions and economic needs as most members here. The only really important considerations are whether my efforts are of benefit to the forum, and to it's members.

I believe that the free exchange of political and social information between the world populations is important. Bitcoin Talk is a great forum for such interaction. I'd be grateful for any help and/or advice in achieving this goal in these difficult times.

I have started a Merit give-away topic for Dutch-speaking people in May 2018.

I have not been too difficult about it: if someone sent a somewhat coherent link with a topic or a reply, proving he was not a plain spammer or nonsense poster, I gave him at least 1 sMerit.

We are months later, in my last post, I almost have to BEG for people to want them.

I have dealt with such a person. I will write on it and its impact in my opinion and then I will post in fittotalk for correction.

I appreciate the efforts you are making, but as pugman said, you are just going to waste a lot of your own time and the results won't really be as good as you might expect them to be. Someone should only do something like this if they have a lot of spare time and have nothing else more important than this to do. Otherwise, it doesn't seem to be much of a necessity to me as well since I believe a person who is even mildly constructive and is making efforts will eventually reach the position he deserves to, and the ones who don't get Merits are actually too lazy themselves and mostly don't care about anything else than accumulating a few tokens every week.

Anyhow, if you do this, I would also suggest to reduce the bonus Merits after a thread is chosen to be the best among all. A little boost for a new member making efforts should be enough to encourage him to keep doing that. Maybe just give them enough to rank up to Member rank? And then let them make it to Full member by themselves.

Maybe it is also necessary to post in the thread already existing meaningful posts that have grammatical errors and are difficult to read by the english native speakers. So the native speakers can require appropriate changes and the author will be able to correct his post. This will benefit all participants.

Sweetstar has submitted this post about the Mexican local elections.
https://fittotalk.com/english-talk/index.php?topic=241

We will discuss this post, and possibly add a few more points before bringing it to Bitcoin Talk for further discussion here. I'm being a bit selfish, because this is the type of discussion that interests me. Hopefully there are other members here who will also enjoy finding out about the political changes around the world.

A community of 1,000 intelligent and articulate members is a valuable asset. If you also consider that there is a fairly wide global distribution, and that most of the members are sceptical of the current structure of governance and banking, then that is a very unusual community.

I am aware of the vice like control that the US and English elite has over the western world. The EU is just a tool they created. A great deal is changing and the nationalist/populist movement is evidence of this, The elite are countering this with their eugenics plan. An obvious part of this is the vaccination initiative driven by Bill and Melinda Gates. There are many global experiments and test projects that have been activated around the world, and it is my belief that Bitcoin is one of these. It is important to understand the impact and interaction of current political changes, and to try to plan for the maintenance of a comfortable and healthy life in the future. If I can generate a few good discussions about economic and political conditions in a variety of countries that are being used for these experiments, then it will be a great help to me, and some of the other members here who are prepared to consider the realities of modern life. I had hoped to create such a thread about El Petro, but Venezuelans seem reluctant to discuss it.

I would like to joined this amazing contest. I just ranked up to Full Member and I'm lacking of topics to share/post. This one will help us and to the forum because it will lessen spammers or they will be encouraged to join this contest. Count me in Jet Cash!
Everyone here has a chance of getting merit but their posts are not enough to be merited rather not useful. 

This is the reason why I loved jet cash, he always gives a chance to other members.
Especially for those deserving members that never receive a merit for their quality posts. (Sorry for the off topic)

Those who have enough knowledge on these kind of stuff already have merits, and besides you're trying too hard to reach out to people who don't even bother. People might make an effort(or just plagiarize,rephrase it) to complete the said task, but after that they'll just go back to spamming, thus ruining the point of this whole thing.

The community here is small,~1% of the entire user base is active. And of that 1%, 99.9% are spammers. So we have like what 1000 good posters or less, realistically. Others are just bots, or spammers. I don't really understand what you're trying to accomplish here, but you could be spending your time in much important things.

I wonder if it would be better to open things up for all ranks, and to include English speakers.  At a personal level, I'm interested in the political actions that receive little publicity, and have opinions or facts added by Bitcoin Talk members.

Here is an example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnZZixKl584

That video describes a giant mosquito that was developed by a company started by Oxford University in 2002, and these mosquitos have been released in north Carolina following the devestation resulting from the recent hurricane. Discussing items like this helps us to understand the dramatic social and economic changes that are going on at the moment.

I'll PM Flying Hellfish a bit later today or tomorrow, and see what he feels about such a contest on the political board.

I know 1% of legendary, for a single post in which they are receiving some great guidance. Seems a pretty sweet deal to me. You could say it's 1000% of Jr. Member, 100% of Member and 10% of Full.

10 is definitely nothing to sneeze at. Like you said the odds are that this post will receive extra attention and may pick up the odd merit from others. I would probably launch the post and project in secret if you plan to award 10 or more merits to it. Then allow the public to take over see how the post does in the wild, and then after a week or 2 award your merits accordingly.

There is nothing preventing you from monitoring these people in the future to watch their progress, and continue awarding them merit if they maintain that level of quality moving forward. I feel you are more inclined to go with a higher reward because you have been having a hard time finding lower ranked members to reward, and this could sort of be seen as an example to those ranks.

Do you consider old post as an entry for the contest? If not then it is better to open a single topic for all the contestant and then you will be the judge and select the best entry to be awarded with merit. This is to limit the contestant's power to pick a good topic for there are many resources to consider in creating a good post. Thus, we could see on who among the contestants will shine without the help of google or internet.  

If they do research in google and steal the idea of the authors then clearly it is a plagiarism. Members with the same idea would be excluded unless if the contestant has posted the post ahead of the other.

You can start a thread for it and I guess it is better to select the newbie and jr. member in rank category, member and full member category, senior and hero member category and legendary category.

This is only suggestion. I hope one will not get offended and the contest will push through. I will be more than happy to join. I have tried creating a thread for a good discussions on crypto currency trading here.

That was my first thought, especially as the post will have already gained 5 merits for being accepted. Also, as was shown by the Dr Gomez post, other members award merits as well, so the highlighted thread becomes a bit of a merit honey pot.

Another option I considered was to guarantee a minimum of 25 for the winner. That would mean adding 20 if no other member awards a merit. That seemed counter productive though, as a really good thread starter shoud receive more merits, and the bonus would be less in that case. Don't forget that 10 merits may be a lot for a newbie for ranking, but it's only 1% of the legendary requirement.

I think it is high.

Perhaps you would consider something like 10. This would boost them to member status, as it seems you really want to provide a nice reward for their effort.

I'd like to restart this project fairly soon, and I'm not sure if beginners or political is the best place to make the thread.

What do you guys think about the 25 merit bonus for the best thread starter? Do you think it is too high?

I think the motivation behind this contest is good, but it wouldn't work. Reason:
- Usually, a person who is capable of writing a good (or at least decent) quality topic, has a decent English writing skill.
- Not enough incentive to do merit contest. I did it before with no-brainer question and yet they still find it difficult.
- A discussion should occur naturally, not tailored by some contest.
- I'm having the same problem, i.e., difficult to find meritable posts. But I think newbies should make their posts noticeable, instead of merit source constantly reaching to them. I was a newbie a few months ago, and I have no problem attracting merit source.

Wish you all the best!

I've just approved you, and I bypassed activation, so you shoud be good to go.

The 5 merit thread starter is a long running project, and it is still active, so you are welcome to join that. The 25 merit bonus is a new idea, and I wanted to get the opinion of other members about it. 25 merits is more than I have ever awarded.

I agree with you suggestion about the Economy board, but economy and political are pretty close, and I wanted to support Flying Hellfish with the work he has done to clean up the political board. I haven't looked at economy for quite a while. and the last time I looked it was full of low value spam.

This idea can be good opportunity for members who don't have English as their first language.
Particularly in some local boards, it seems merit sources haven't worked after recession of crypto market.
I think this trend should be improved not only by relying on merit sources but by broading potentials of members in local boards.

Actually, I will participate in this contest if it will be held in the future because I want to improve my English skill and activate Bitcointalk.
I have just registered Fit to talk.


I want to suggest that Economy be included as a topic because an economical information of each country can be useful and interesting for us.
For example, Jet Cash exemplified "El Petro and its impact on Venezuela and the world economy"  and this theme is deeply related with economy.

I have tried running a few threads on such topics with mixed results. The idea behind this initiative is to bring new members on local boards into the main Bitcoin Talk community. I would hope that legendaries and heroes could start such topics, and in fact many of them have done so, and they have created tutorials. The problem seems to be the unwillingness of many members to read the topcs.

There is also a personal interest in this project. I would like to read comments about life in politically unstable countries. I would also like to hear comments about other economic problems - for example, how people are handling the situation in Greece after the rape and theft of their national assets by the European Union.

Scalability discussons can be a bit difficult. One has to consider the reason for the creation of Bitcoin, and its possible place in a future world economy. I believe that received wisdom is not accurate, and this distorts the views on many people. Informed heated discussion about this would be good, but it may be difficult to find informed posters.