Bitcoin Forum

Hello administrators of the Bitcointalk forum. I am new to the forum but been observing and understanding the workings of the forum for late. I am a regular at the Indian board and see a lot of scam to complete fraud posts on the board. The mods are probably not that active on that board. The other day I saw some arbitrage post that proclaimed arbitrage opportunity opening up in some coin which was a complete fraud. Such posts must be dealt with swiftly to prevent innocent members from falling into the trap and loosing their funds. Hence, I request the team to kindly make a few appointments for the Indian board.

Moreover, India has multiple languages and people all across the country are increasingly adopting Bitcoin. Considering Bitcointalk to be the premier forum for discussions I would request the team/theymos to kindly introduce multiple languages section in the Indian board. Languages like Hindi,Tamil, Bengali, Marathi etc (major ones having 50 Million+ speakers) can help the regional community get better accustomed to the forum. I will also help in scaling the cryptocurrency community in India.

Lastly, I would also like to point towards the lack of Meriters on the Indian board. I see many genuine posts not getting the recognition they deserve.

Hope the points are looked at.

There is already a sub-forum in Indian Local Board named  Regional Language (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=123.0). I don't think there should be seperate sub-forum for different languages.

For your info, irfan_pak10 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=350580) has already  applied for being merit source (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5054536) and I think theymos will add him on next update.

My bad. I have seen irfan_pak to send sMerit in Indian Local board and that's why I thought him an Indian.

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Wondering why have you used CAPS LOCK (Block letters) in your title.

Sorry, I hold nothing against Irfan but I guess he is from Pakistan. I don't see the correlation as the ecosystem and development is totally different in both the countries. Different languages, development community, growth prospects etc. I am sure that he would not be able to read any of the major languages spoken here. Moreover, the challenges faced in India are totally different and one would need to be an inhabitant to understand the political/economical POV of Indians.

Moreover, my major apprehension for his application (as a Smerit) would be his bounty portal. He is actively running many campaigns at a time and I don't see how he can add value to the forum. i know he is a gentle being but would he be able to give in the time and efforts required by a Merit source?

Just thought the heading should be in Bold. Makes it more presentable. Not shouting, for sure.  :-[


Yeah, I saw the board. But it is a complete mess. The thing is all major languages were written in the same script i.e. Devnagri. Hence, all the languages look strikingly similar. I have to carefully look for Hindi posts and then read if the topic interests me... It could be more clean and organized if the supported languages were made a ub forum inside India board.

Check this - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3125174.0

Apply to be a merit source and help resolve the issue.  ;)

I thought one has to be a renowned and reputable member on the forum before being able to apply as a merit source
Or should have earned a certain amount of merits,considering the fact that he/sge is vying to be in position to decide meritable posts..

Your ability to earn Merit doesn’t display your ability to fairly distribute it. If you see a problem and you believe you have the ability and desire to fix it, you should make an effort to do so. It takes a village, as they say.

Actually it is stupid to deny such a large population (http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/india-population/) a Moderator and Merit Source.
If Benson Samuels (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=66510) cannot be reinstated , then Indian community should get new moderator and a merit source too.

Okay, that is great. Should we move this thread to your post?

Yeah I could but to be honest I know the chances of me becoming one is close to zero.  :D

Feel free to do so...

Trying is better than doing nothing  :) So if you want to be a merit source then show why you want to be then why you need to be a merit source,just pick the 10 of the meritable post and post your application.

I am not sure that even if you are capable you will be selected or not.Because "If you want to be merit source 1. Be a somewhat established member.".

This will not help for there are some things that should be prioritize first than appointing a merit source in your local board. Just be patience for now because this problem is not only happening in your local board. If theymos will going to decide to solve this matter then he will also consider other local boards that has the same problem.

You should need to get along with your local board. We too have have same problem but we never complain because we do understand the forum and the users with our differences and we should be careful always.

I think theymos is solving this matter by evaluating potential Merit Sources and Staff Members. The theymos way of solving problems is empowering the community to take action with systems designed to address the issues.

Agree that the Indian section needs an active moderator. I'd like to know what kind of commitment it'll take to be a moderator. Does it mean spending hours upon hours on the forum? I'll definitely ask around.
As far as the scams are concerned, the space is still growing. I also think that Indians are a little harder to fool owing to our jugaad mentality and the constant mental acrobatics we have to perform to wade through our normal civilian lives.

One really sad thing i have noticed is that Indians who know something love to use their newfound knowledge to scam others rather than help others grow. Yet, in this bear market, we can hope for a revival of some real work ethic. A lot of young people are trustworthy and idealistic and hope they can gather around to change things. Let us hope we can change things for the better out here.

Likely, one of the difficulties lies in the activity of the smaller local boards (albeit having great potential). I’ve taken a look at some information relative to the last few month as can be seen here:
Trying to get data at roughly one month intervals, on a monthly basis, roughly 10 people receive sMerit from somewhat the same figure that award it, being the merit awarded between 15 and 39 in the intervals I’ve taken a look at, and making an average on 0,012 merits per post as of late.

The issue perhaps is that the average posts per day is lowish (34-41 in recent months), and that is counting all childboards. Nevertheless, a (small) Merit  Source could help to pick up some traction which is desirable.

Why don't we have number of merits for the merit sources based on the activity of those boards,just like you said Indian boards have share 41 merits in last month so the merit source for Indian board will have 100 merits to merit the users for 30 days cycle,if he needs more merits then he can appeal again about more merits requirement.

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I think we have some of reputed members in this forum from India who can deserved to be a merit source.

There are other users as well in some local boards that should be considered. There are application also that has been submitted in this section applying to become a merit source in their respective local boards. However, I do not see a reply from admin for now or maybe it was being made confidential after the appeal to become a merit source for I only saw replies in their application supporting the notion to become a merit source. Well whatever the forum will going to happen for sure admin will going to look the best solution for the forum.

I am seeing a lot of responses from our Indian members but I doubt the admins will automatically assign a member to become a merit source just because of the thread. Why not talk it out in your local board where you will nominate your merit sources which you will back them up here in the meta section once they created a nomination thread of their own. You in the community must decide who is qualified to distribute merit in your local board as you know who will be deserving for that position.

I assume Theymos thinks the same, as probably one of the reasons vlad230's application (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030146.0) for a source went unanswered is that he was earning merit, he was distributing merit but he wasn't doing so in the section he applied for.


What has world population to do with the Indian subforum?
The Dutch subforum has more posts than the Japanese board and India has barely 1/3 more posts with half of them going to the altcoin/ICO section.

On the entire board, I've counted just 8 threads that we're bumped today.
And DdmrDdmr showed the stats, on average something between 30-40 posts a day in the entire board, so the population of the country means nothing when it comes to activity on the forum.

I think the reason why we have less posts in Indian sub board is that language used in the board also english most of the time,so most of the Indians were just stick with the main boards other than their local board.

But still we need moderators in that section to remove spam threads.

That is true there are not enough merit sources only in Russian board.

I think that the lack of a mod and Merit source is partly responsible for the mess that is existant at the Indian board. The situation is still better when compared to the time I joined the forum. I only saw bounty, services being advertised on the board and genuine queries, information going undiscussed. I tried my best to give life to some of the topics that were interesting and demanded debating. Because the quality is now improving I can see a few genuine members that are trying to have healthy conversations. I want to merit them to increase the trend but limited because of my Merit giving ability. I am sure once we have a mod and Merit source we would see great amount of technical and development talks on the board. Afterall, we have the second largest base of Blockchain devs in the world.

Thanks for the advice. I will start a poll/discussion and lookout for an active member to be nominated.

I agree that the activity is low but once we have a mod and Source it will bump up. As most of us are fluent in English we can easily switch between Main and Indian board and because Indian board was in such a shitty situation a few days back, most of the members were avoiding it. But the situation is improving and you can see great discussions once a merit source is assigned.

I think Bitlover10 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2600854), welovedcrypto (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2614133) and a few other members are doing a wonderful job at the regional language section of the Indian board. Can we have them nominated for Merit source? Heisenberg_Hunter (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1564795) is also active on the India board but I am not sure if he understands Hindi. The forum needs to pay focus to the needs of 1.3 billion. Majority of the Indians are currently into buying and selling crypto for a profit. If we want to propagate the real benefits of blockchain, we need materials in Hindi. Bitlover10 has initiated a beautiful campaign and more support needs to be provided.

AFAIK, Bitlover10 is really very much helpful and contributing to the Indian community and he certainly receives merits from me. And on top of that, he distributes the merits fairly to other members in the community. I dried up all my smerits and have merited almost every quality post being made in the board. I have applied for a source to encourage the community to contribute more to the Indian board but there isn't any response from theymos regarding the matter till now. I am currently creating a topic on the verge of educating our fellow members on bitcoin technical aspects and how they can be useful to India as a whole but the completion is based on the time allocation of mine to the topic creation.

Most of the reputed Indians have moved onto the main board and are not willing to contribute to the Indian board assuming that the board has reached its saturation state with the spammers. We need to bring back some of the prominent posters to the board and that can be done only if there is some kind of better activity in the board. I have highlighted some of the major issues our board is currently facing and lacking in terms of being active in this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3125174.msg49851818#msg49851818). We need more posters to educate the community and to completely eradicate the fake translators and spammers  dominating the board.

But did you have to bump an eight month old thread for this??? You know you can start your own thread right....and those users mentioned are doing a tremendous job for themselves around the forum but without doubt am certain they know the procedure to follow when they are interested in becoming a merit source.

Nominate? Sounding like a government man right about now, merit sources are not nominated here, they apply for the job! Want to know more about this follow the link https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0 YOU ARE WELCOME.

Is that a wrong thing to do? I was going through the regional thread and wanted to see more rewards for creating threads in local threads. My query and the point raised was not addressed, so thought of bringing it back to the front.


Yeah, it is worse than the government. They are arbitrarily chosen by the admin.

When people apply for Smerit, users of the forum generally support the user in the form of their affirmation in the thread. So in a way, they are nominating him or showing their support for his application.