Topic: Meriting: local boards posters vs rest of boards posters (Read 727 times)

This is the thread I am taking about:
Help me translate my best posts in your Local Board

The ultimate objective of this thread is having the “same post” merited on multiple local board. The merit are for the translator, rather than for the original writer, because of the translation work.

Sometime same guy who posted an english topic on global boards translate it also on his own language, its inevitable that some users who already merited an english post would also merited the local version but I dont see there is something wrong with it. Especially translating on a local lingo isnt easy to do. Maybe props for the effort.

Good point. Now I remembered the one you created that Ive translated even though the topic is hard to translate, I think some on our local boards appreciate the topic. We should admit that there are users who arent really good on english (me too) thats why they reading more some local post they ought to understand. Meriting it or not, is not an issue, how can it be? When the topic is reliable and a good source of knowledge.

Definetly agree. I already linked my “translation thread“ above and I can confirm this is actually why is happening.
When a post is translated on a local board the translated post get merited from a lot of local posters I never heard about, who probably don’t post much on international board and get exposed to the new content.
This is what I wanted to achieve: maximise the circulation of new ideas in local boards, where language barrier is the first issue.

Where are you going at here? OP is complaining about how the competition for merit is tough in local boards because there is a whole group abusing it. He didn't point out anything about English speaking people getting more merits compared to local board posters and besides no one is stopping them on learning English in their own and be better at it if you think that way.

Yeah that is a good point. That’s why I said it’s better to share posts with some informative stuff in it over local boards and are ultimately merit-able.



Yeah, if a person is originally from English background then it’s like whole forum is their home and they have better chances of getting merits. I mean if local board has people from same community then overall forum has English plus rest posters reading the OP thus making it more widespread and should get recognised faster for merits.

What are you talking about? Basing it from your post history you haven't had posted in any local board whatsoever so I don't see your point on how you are "unable to compete" with them if you aren't even posting in any of them, basically when it comes to you accusing a local board of having a merit circle should have no kind of traction in it since you aren't a local board poster to even know it or see it happen. From what I see in your post history as well you aren't really active here in the forum and will only come online if a signature campaign is open so do you really think you deserve merits at all?

Nor should we. Posts that are placed both on the general English boards, and on translated on Local boards, do have an added value of bringing content over to a wider scope of readers. That is in fact beneficial in the big picture. I don’t think that posts of this nature are likely to be merited by the same person in more than one language, at least to any significant level, so it’s not so much a double merit chance, but rather a chance to reach a broader scope of viewers (which is a good thing).

This is so true but I don't think we can have any sort of mechanism to trace this thing. If a DT is told to screen such fowl acts of meriting then they will literally exhaust over the time. Since the number of non-english boards are outnumbered so as to non-english users.

Frankly speaking we can't do anything about this.

Moreover, there is also one more way to attract meriters, you create posts with knowledge sharing stuff and some merits do come along the way. If you are not abusing then everything is just fine.

Now here is the twist:
People do share these knowledge sharing posts one more time into Local boards and earn the merits for it.

So it's like getting double merits for the same posts, just into different languages.

Yes, this is happening but we can't do anything about it I guess.

In our local (Pilipinas) it is hard to earn merit before you can get single merit or a bunch of merits you must need to have a good quality of post that satisfy other local members by that at the start of the local board you must need immediately learn to make a constructive content before going into other boards.

The local board is like training ground before getting outside you must need to learn a lot to make a good output thread and just not creating only to gain merit.

IMO looks like every Filipino here on the forum wants to become competitive and productive on our forum.

It is more abusive in merit system than those who received merits in local boards. I don't know why such application will be given by merit. I don't know the reason behind that. Is it really helpful for community or for the user itself?

Even those who joined in raffle or contest that needs merit just to qualify their entry. They received merits in order qualify? Now, it should be the focused of the forum rather than those who are posting in local boards with their helpful contents.

But then, I respect everyone who helps every users in this forum. And as long as there is no modification in merit system. We cannot judge everyone because giving merits is depend upon the user, if he satisfied, glad or impressed by that user.

I see a lot of people that have a lot of merits and mostly write posts in English language but then when I see their merit stats, a bunch of merits comes from local boards and you'll rarely find 1-2 merit that may be given from default/global boards.
The idea behind merit was to make it difficult for low quality posters that are seeking for sig campaigns to rank up. I think the problem that we face from local boards regarding to merit abuse needs some glance over again.

Also since you mentioned ChuckBuck , want to note that I can't understand the merit on posts like this

As you know, I am a strong supporter of local boards.
Language barriers (something that is not part of my background, for a variety of reasons) prevent a lot of users deepening their knowledge of an already difficult subject as bitcoin is.

So, yes, local boards are perfectible, and probably in some of them is easier to get merits rather than English ones, both because local MS or because of the "slowness" of some of them, where it is basically impossible for a good post to be unnoticed.

But the good service they do to the forum is vastly overturning this slight "bias".
Local boards permit new users to be more confident to ask questions about bitcoin, exchange of ideas and grow into real bitcoiners.
Some users contribute to local boards translating good posts in their language for others to read.
Some good local users helps more "global" ones to discuss and exchange ideas for post in the international sections.
A lot of very good users aren't confident enough with their second  (or third) language to write in the English forum, they might struggle with some cultural barrier, or, simply, they do not care.
I think It would be unfair to penalise them for this choice.

Taking out these boards from the merit system would endanger the steam that keeps those machines running smoothly.

Back then this already might be considered as Merit Abuse, but as time pass by, we don't for we are seeing their works/contributions along the way. Also we do accept the fact that not all are being given Merits that's also another reason why we should atleast spread those Merits even if its on a repeated cycle / the same user (depends whether they're actually good) , so sooner or later whoever has one and finds them they'll get what deserve.

I can't speak for the local boards since I don't frequent any of them, but the above is pretty much true.  And it's not only that thoughts keep getting repeated, they're repeated in such a low quality manner that the result is that those sections are chock full of garbage posts which are often times hard to understand anyway.  That's especially true in sections like Bitcoin/Altcoin Discussion and Speculation.

I don't think anyone really has a problem with local boards having merits circulate within them, and in fact I think all local boards that have enough traffic ought to have at least one merit source representing them.  Just because you don't speak English doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to rank up as long as you're contributing to the best of your ability.

But I noticed on my local board they are really helping each other that's why I don't mind seeing a lot of merits being sent to one another. To be fairly honest, local boards discussion is deeper than the 2nd language of their own, if you're not a born english speaker then you would not understand the every meaning of the words behind metaphors and jargons which is reciprocal on local boards discussion.

Actually we can abuse anything, just like creating accounts on bitcointalk but be ready for the consequences.

I know meriting are mostly happening in local boards but it is not right to deprive them with forum's incentive. Anyways, it is their merit they do what they want to do with it.

You're quite right as even I myself are frequently posting in our Local Board (Filipino), yet just for the sake of OP's case to be closed, I've calculated my own merits and only 25% of it (8 out of 32 merits in the last 120 days) are from local boards. Hence it wasn't big enough even my posts in the Local are of pure quality and lengthy posts. I was even merited in my previous comment here as I've only stated a concrete point on how local posts are merited (and we had the same perspective with the topic).

Therefore, it's better I guess to lock this thread as we all proved (even DdmrDdmr indicates statistical data with regards to the local boards' merits) that there's nothing wrong with merit giving in local boards as it was a better medium to understand each other's ideas and as long as you've made yourself good points in your posts, sooner or later you'll be having merits.

For OP, is english language is your native language? If yes, you will never realize how it becomes a barrier for a noob to learn the deepest or even fundamentals of cryptocurrency specially when you english is not your primary language.

Why there are content created again in local board? Simply, to help some newbies who cannot understand english language. I know all of us here started from a scratch and having a local board helps us to grasp everything in cryptocurrency. That is why there are posts in local boards that given a merit/s.

Now, you will say that it is a merit abuse? I believe it is not. Why? Because posters who are giving effort just to help and share learnings in this forum MUST be merited wherever he post it.

Why do you want to stop giving merit in local boards? Are you sure that if a topic is in local board, it is useless? There are some people who can express more their suggestions throught their language.

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Here are some of posts in my Local Board (Filipino):

Bitcoin Transaction without Internet. by finaleshot2016
[TUTORIAL] Send Bitcoin to Multiple Addresses in One Transaction Only by Greatarkansas
Interesting Stats 24 Hours after Bitcoin has Halved by theb

All of those post are made by my countrymen in local board. Thay made my confusions gone and make things easier to understand. So tell me, is it good to have merits spread in local board? Yes, because my fellow countrymen and even I became more quality posters and contributor of the forum.

Excluding Meta and Reputation I presume is because you gather that the Merits obtained there are somewhat "not for the general public" in a sense. By that criteria though, other boards/threads could also be excluded, but it derives a consciously subset type of view.

Regadless:
Total awarded Merits: 691.439
Meta awarded Merits: 92.105
Reputation awarded Merits: 19.495

Total non-Meta and non_Reputation awarded Merits: 579.839
Total Local Board awarded Merits: 205.252 (35,40% of above).
The number of non-Meta and non_Reputation merited profiles is 33.836 out of 34.537 profiles.

With that, the resulting data is as follows:

a)   All Merited Profiles (local merits vs non-meta, non-reputation merits):


b)   All Merited Profiles with 100 or above earned Merits (local merits vs non-meta, non-reputation merits):

@DdmrDdmr
Could you please narrow down your analysis by excluding meta and reputation boards.

Just wanted to analyze merit activities of local boards vs rest of boards excluding meta and reputation.

This may shed some perspective. Out of all the merited accounts, this is the margin of contribution of the Local Gene by groups:

a)   All Merited Accounts:

Looking at the above data it seems that:

-   Local boards are certainly important on the whole, since 35,71% of merited accounts have earned at least 1 local merit.

-   30,32% of merited accounts have earned at least half of their merits on local boards.

-   24,89% of all merited accounts have earned all their merits on local boards.

-   10,83% of all merited accounts are merited both on local boards and English boards.


b)   All accounts with 100 earned merits or above:

Nevertheless, if we delimit the view to those that have earned 100 merits or above:

-   61,11% have earned at least 1 merit on a local board.

-   34,79% of merited accounts have earned at least half of their merits on local boards.

-   Only 5,19% of all merited accounts have earned all their merits on local boards.

-   55,92% of all merited accounts are merited both on local boards and English boards.

It seems to me that local boards are clearly important. On the whole, 205.252 out of 691.439 awarded merits are local (29,68%).

I think not all the local because sometimes you can get your merits came from the gambling, meta, and beginners and help most of the time I see most of the merits out there and some of the merits sources are came on the local boards on their countries that's why some of the users are having a fast merit count and we cannot control this because if they have good contents and topics they deserve merits so why not give them the merits they need also it is good to help them to rank up some of them are giving a lot of time just to share their thoughts, researchers, understanding about the specific information just to share.

The number of posts in these boards compared to the posts in your local board, when I open any topic in the Bitcoin section and Marketplace, I notice dozens of responses per second that make it impossible to check them and give them merits.
Not all local board get enough points, as there are boards that do not contain any source of merit and therefore it is very difficult to obtain high-quality posts.

Try to post to several boards to increase your chance of getting many.

There are few explanations as to why local posters receive more merits than other members and abuse isn't the main reason.
- Firstly, on most local boards, there are usually few active members and a dozen of new posts daily at max. Which makes it impossible for a high quality post to go unnoticed or to get burried under hundreds of shitposts.
- Secondly, because of the low number of active local posters, MS tend to merit even average posts to incentivise new comers to stay and keep contributing.
- because of the lack of activity, there is always a room for new and interesting subjects/ideas to discuss. You can simply translate a good topic and you may receive more merits than OP.
- it's not always about quality posts, sometimes it's just about how much the member is committed and dedicated to improve his local board.
...
Regarding sig campaigns, those who post only on local have lower chances of joining one.

In giving merits we have different criteria and this is subjective if you want the content of that post give them merit because they deserve, If you see those content which is useful and helpful to the members and deserve merit why not give it to them, those are the people giving their time to share information and knowledge to the other people who want to learn and earn more knowledge, it is not bad that you help them to improve it is a good exchange too if you give chance or hope because you give merit they feel appreciated because someone merits their contents.

On local board vs other board, some of the users are active on local board some of them are not, the reason why? Language barrier and criticism, some of them just only post on their local because they are not good in English and at the same time they are afraid to share their thoughts because of the criticism they possible received, some of them are active on other boards because they want to share their contents on those boards which some of the members appropriated too.

In fact, local boards are good for help to beginners because they are confident to use their language they can easily understand the concept which is a good thing.

If you that member has good quality content why not give them what they deserve.

Just giving some highlights.
This is more accurate IMO, so everybody can get a stare on it for a while and maybe your concern might get a solution (Just maybe, if its really reasonable and necessary)

I’ve no doubt that local boards are an potentially an important point of contact with Bitcoin for many users, and as such, constitute an element to enhance, rather than penalize by excluding them from taking part in the Merit System. Whether we like it or not, ranks are an incentive to most as a lateral aspect of the forum, and people on Local Boards should not be deprived from that in any way.

Instead of generalizing on what may be happening on (some) Local Boards, it would be much more enlightening to bring some concrete cases to the table in any case, and not to generalize over some kind of grudge over what your personal experience may be. You do mention a specific case as an example, but that is of a concrete single account, thus taking the part for the whole, and extrapolating that case as reason enough to rant about local boards on the whole.

Helping out users on the local boards doesn't mean there's an abuse going on. In local boards there are also contributors which are considered to be good on giving out activities and let the board be alive. These users just deserve what they trully deserve.
Like what I've been doing recently, my whole focus on being a Source is for my Local, also already helped a lot to make their accounts ranked up. For me Merits are now an award. Therefore, I give awards to users as long as they do something good.

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P. S. I did lower my standards a bit (maybe not but for me I actually did it) but I don't consider giving on repeated topics. So recently, there are still a few on my inventory to spend compared before.

My point:
There's nothing wrong on helping users to rank up.
You post something new (depends)?
You post something that can help(depends)?
You post something very informative(depends)?
Then yes, you'll be rewarded(depends).

Note: Depends whether it has been given or on a repeated topic.

It's very hard to browse and dig in global section just to find a good post to give merit. Honestly speaking, I will not do that if I'm going to give merit. In my case, I just give merit randomly to a good post on the last page before I post my own.

In my opinion, the problem is not the repetition of the post but the speed of the post being flooded by other post which in local board case, the posting activity is not that fast compared in global section and people can easily spot a good post.

Which competition you are talking on? Getting accepted in signature campaign? If you are qualified enough, you will be accepted, there's nothing to compete. Most of the times, local posters aren't accepted (Local posts actually) which made local contributors less qualified for the campaigns.
If we talk about repeated posts which is true, but there's no way you will have only unique post. Most of the times, discussion are same.
If we talk about my local board, there's no one to merit a post, no one posting quality though.

I do think some members have an advantage when there are a lot of local merit sources that could give actual merit to the posters. I think there's no problem with that if it goes to the write people and the post is meritable. I think there are fair merit sources everywhere.

There are still merit givers in those boards, not just as much compared to the local ones. We could see the fact that most of the new posts on the boards that you mentioned are somewhat already been discussed over and over again.

From my point of view, it's slightly possible to spend merit on local boards although my country has no local boeard here, seeing members here expressing their deep inside questions clearly in local language seems more understandable, and more open for higher ranks to help such members but must be a solely quality posts.
But I don't think local boarders mainly have slots in signature campaigns, this isn't true, many campaign managers are not only from local board, @Brainboss managing 777coin isn't from local board.

I am sorry for the imprecisely phrase that I wrote above. It is more correctly to say that account has not yet belonged to Bruno and it is imprecisely to say it is hacked, compromised, or bought.

My phrase above should be edited as "Current owner of the account, instead of buyer/ hacker".

Thank your for the correction.

A disclosure for you, that I donated to the last scam exit of Bruno. So you can see how bad feelings I have after it is found that very probably not created by Bruno.

What are you saying? Bruno has passed - the original account owner - for someone to have bought the account after the fact would probably mean that someone related to Bruno sold the account. Though the question that arises is the very obvious "why?" since you couldn't do anything with the account after everyone knew that the original account-holder had died.

Do you have proofs that the said account was bought and not hacked? If you don't have it then why you claim it is bought and post fake statement?
Sorry for going off topic but speaking about a deceased person in a "bad" manner makes me a little bit angry independently from who is that person. Feel free to report this post and the lies in the previous one ffs...

Edit: this shit made me think about a "downvote" button where you can hide a post if it was pressed by a specified number of forum members.
Edit2: thanks for avoiding much more drama in this subject. /s the whole text.

You said about building reputation. It is the point. Shitposters are unable to build up their reputation, even they bought a Legendary account or a VIP account.

Look at Phinnaeus Gage. Buyer of the account fastly destroyed the reputation by scam charity and the account was marked with many negative trust feedbacks.

You should know that on the forum, there is a staff account who used to be a bought account. He bought it, built its reputation and became a staff. I don't know which account is but I remembered hilariousandco disclosed it when the forum had thousands of banned account because of plagiarism in 2019.

bill gator who used to be a participant of Chip Mixer campaign. He bought that account, and built it up with excellent post history and good contributions to the forum community. It makes sense to see his appearance in Chip Mixer campaign. I don't attack him or Chip Mixer campaign, and I use it as a good case study for account's reputation growth

I know another bought account that used to be a participant of Bustadice campaign. Let me check for a while.
That one: St4yInTh3D4rk

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Buyer is replaced by:

Based on my experience, I see that there are plenty of local members who generally write only on the local part of the forum.
Why?
I suppose they don't speak English well and therefore do not have the confidence to write on the English part of the forum.
This doesn't mean that they don't contribute to this forum and don't write quality and useful posts.
This was one of the reasons why I started the topic on my local part of the forum, where local members can report their quality posts.
If the posts are constructive and of quality I and other members reward them with merit.
I don't see any merit abuse here, just help for local members to receive reward for their effort and contribution to this forum, for the posts that most other members in the forum can't understand and can't reward with merit (unless if they make effort to translate such posts which is unlikely).

I don't think the OP is crying nor whatsoever, he's just expressing the unavoidable fact that most merits are from the local and some people are abusing it but then again, when was the last time you are merited for your quality post? The only merit you've receive in the last 120 days is from cabalism13 which contains only 1 merit. No wonder why you encourage people to buy an account as the forum's (un)official rules clearly stated that account sales are discouraged. Also, learning local language? Isn't your local language were your mother tongue hence you don't need to LEARN it? Merits isn't earned for fluency dude, it was earned because your post is either helpful, humorous, or informative, and not because you posted it in straight fluent local language. Lastly, when was the last time you had oined a campaign? Please next time be kind to other users and stop encouraging what should be discourage. And of course, do what you say.


Indeed, there's no wonder why newbies prefer posting in their local boards because their mother tongue (local lang) is a much suitable way for them to express their queries, suggestions, and ideas further than the English. And also, a lot of threads or post are merited due to the fact that they deserve it with their clear good point and idea.

I agree with some of it, Yes some time merit abuse is happening in local boards, but I do also in favor of meriting in local boards due to multiple reasons. I see many posters are making quality posts in their local language instead of English, as everyone has a grip on their local language, Secondly, there are many users who are making efforts to educate the newbies in their local language section by making posts, Where I believe many posts are merit deserving. Thirdly, It's my personal opinion, I usually check my local language thread to see if someone is making efforts in making some quality posts, I usually give him merits, you can see my history I have mostly spent my merits in local boards and especially to jr members of this forum, But alas these days I'm low at merit, actually 0  

Do not cry just because of you are not smart enough with respect to meriting and campaign manager's criteria!

Nothing will change unless you change yourself:
1. Buy an account:
2. Learn a local language and earn merits.
3. Enjoy slots in campaigns.

As simple as 123 because it has become possible for many people already .

Sure, merit abuse happens everywhere, including local boards, and in some it is easier to earn merit than in some other parts of the forum,  but I don't think that's the main reason for you not getting spots in signature campaigns.

In the last 2 months or so, you made 9 posts overall, 4 of which are applications for signature campaigns, and 1 is this post. I am not a sig camapign manager, but I am pretty sure that beside merit earned, they pay attention to that as well. If you don't make post for a month or two and then suddenly apply for sig spot, they might think that you are only interested in this forum if you are part of the signature campaign, decreasing your chances of getting accepted.

So, before asking for forum changes, focus on your own activity as that's the thing that you can actually change, and pretty much immediately.

Local boards do have a merit abuse problem, yes. But honestly, we don't have to worry too much about excess merit being spread across the forum because eventually if they do anything meaningful with it (i.e. DT) people will know.

In the case of signature campaign woes (fighting over garbage 'jobs') you can also see their post quality. Merit is very subjective, just like how someone's post quality in the eyes of individual viewers is very subjective. You can't avoid shitty posts getting merit outside of Local and you can't avoid shitty posts getting merit inside of Local. Excluding any board from merit just because certain users are abusing the system is a very surface-level patch to the problem: you're not treating the root cause, merely the symptom.

When I checked why most meriting is NOT happening on usual boards[1] (other than meta/reputation/scam accusation), I was told most posts on usual discussion boards are JUST REPEATED THOUGHTS. I am just wondering same problem is not happening on local boards? Still local board poster are enjoying big merits from their folks.

Why not we assume, "it is okay to merit you even you post a repeated content because you are my countryman or you speak my language".

Probably lots of merit abusing are already happening on local boards just to help each other.

How worst merit system will get suffered if local boards are excluded from meriting?
(It is English forum and local boards are here to support non-native English speakers hence ranking can be through its core parts).

P.S:
Yes, I decided to post this topic after unable to compete against local posters even I am here for around 5 years and do posting after my regular job. But, people do buy an account and post in local and building their reputation easily and enjoy slots on campaigns. One recent example : ChuckBuck (This is not personal attack. I passionately hate that, but for example I need to mention it as a confirmed bought account).

[1]Usual boards:
Bitcoin Discussion, Economics, Speculation, Trading Discussion, all Marketplace sub boards and Beginners & Help.