How to determine the need for new local boards

[qwk]

So, a lot of so-called "people" who speak gibberish when you talk to them tend to complain that there's a need to give them their own "local boards"
For obvious reasons, not all of them can get what they want.
A "poll" in a forum is not a good metric to establish real "need", since there's no "cost" involved in submitting your answer.
Fortunately, nowadays we have something of "value" that people might want to give in return for getting a local board: merit.

Therefore, my suggestion is as follows:

Create a sticky thread in meta "Local Board Requests".
This should be a moderated thread and locked.
If there's a request for some specific local board, say "Ukrainian", people may ask the moderator of the thread to post* a single post for that specific suggested board in the thread i.e. "Suggested board: Ukrainian".
People may now give merit to that post to show their support for the creation of said board.
Boards with a certain threshold of merit might should be created.

* I obviously didn't make that clear enough: only the moderator will post in the thread.
Suggestions go to him and he creates the post. Only he will receive any merit.
That prevents merit fishing by suggesting boards.

[cry4crypto]

No offense, but I think it's a stupid idea to give people merit just for a local board suggestion.

1) It makes it impossible for newbs to show their support for a specific local board.

2) It opens multiple possibilities of both vote & merit manipulation.

Why not make the sticky & add a poll instead, then just determine which local board would be in high demand based on the poll results?

[qwk]

No offense, but I think it's a stupid idea to give people merit just for a local board suggestion.

Yep, that would be stupid. That's why it should be a moderated thread and the "suggestion posts" should always come from the moderator.
The moderator of that thread would receive a lot of merit, no doubt. Which is why I personally would suggest to let a bot be the mod.

1) It makes it impossible for newbs to show their support for a specific local board.

That's part of the intention. Why would you want "newbies" to vote for a local board?
That only incentivizes the creation of twinks for voting.
Also, the requests of people who've been on bitcointalk for a while might be considered a little more important, don't you think?

2) It opens multiple possibilities of both vote & merit manipulation.

I see none. Care to elaborate?
Sure, "merit sources" could upvote certain boards, but I don't think that'd be too bad, considering who they are.

Why not make the sticky & add a poll instead, then just determine which local board would be in high demand based on the poll results?

No cost involved, people would ask for a lot of petty forums just out of a whim.
Also, twink accounts to upvote a certain forum might become an issue.

[cry4crypto]

I edited my post to explain in a bit more detail why I think voting with merit seems like a very bad idea to me. Obviously a poll could be manipulated as well, but there's little incentive to do so though!

[cry4crypto]

That's part of the intention. Why would you want "newbies" to vote for a local board?
That only incentivizes the creation of twinks for voting.
Also, the requests of people who've been on bitcointalk for a while might be considered a little more important, don't you think?

This is a valid concern, but I see little incentive to create twinks just for the purpose of voting for a specific local boards. I'm 100% with you that votes from more established members should be more important. Perhaps it would make sense to do background checks on all the voters once the poll gets enough traction? If votes were placed with twinks, I guess it should become quite obvious when looking at the posting history. I wouldn't ignore newbie votes completely though, I feel they should have a voice as well, and that it could benefit everyone. We've seen a large influx of new users in the past couple of years because of mainstream media's interest in Bitcoin. Newbs are the loudest complainers when it comes to getting merit. They are often ostracized because of their bad English & shitposting (and in 99,9% of cases, rightly so). Let them do all the complaining & shitposting in their local boards (hell, I would even suggest restricting some members' access stricly to their local boards) and let us enjoy cleaner and more comprehensible English sections of the forum!

I see none. Care to elaborate?
Sure, "merit sources" could upvote certain boards, but I don't think that'd be too bad, considering who they are.

Merit sources upvoting certain boards is one angle. Call me paranoid, but whoever would post the suggestion in the thread could simply buy merit and manipulate the vote this way. Unless, as you suggested earlier, these would be posted by a bot (which is a far better idea, but it still doesn't include the newbies, and as I explained above, I think it's important to let them have a vote as well).

[qwk]

Perhaps it would make sense to do background checks on all the voters once the poll gets enough traction? If votes were placed with twinks, I guess it should become quite obvious when looking at the posting history.

That would place a heavy burden on the shoulders of staff.
Which is kind of the opposite of the "semi-automated" system I propose.

I wouldn't ignore newbie votes completely though, I feel they should have a voice as well, and that it could benefit everyone. We've seen a large influx of new users in the past couple of years because of mainstream media's interest in Bitcoin. Newbs are the loudest complainers when it comes to getting merit. They are often ostracized because of their bad English & shitposting (and in 99,9% of cases, rightly so). Let them do all the complaining & shitposting in their local boards (hell, I would even suggest restricting some members' access stricly to their local boards) and let us enjoy cleaner and more comprehensible English sections of the forum!

I can agree on that. Which is why I personally would vote for certain local boards, even if they're not in my language.

In fact, I guess my proposed solution might lead to a situation where people who want a specific language forum will actively "lobby" the established users of this forum.
That might even become annoying, now that I think about it.

Sure, "merit sources" could upvote certain boards, but I don't think that'd be too bad, considering who they are.

Merit sources upvoting certain boards is one angle. Call me paranoid, but whoever would post the suggestion in the thread could simply buy merit and manipulate the vote this way.

Buying merit just to upvote a local board?
Well, if it's worth that much for someone, I guess he'll have a good reason to have that board, so why not let him have it?

[cry4crypto]

That would place a heavy burden on the shoulders of staff.
Which is kind of the opposite of the "semi-automated" system I propose.

I can't argue with that, it would require some work, but in my opinion it would also bring (much) more accurate results. Also, I am pretty sure there would be plenty of "volunteers" that would give staff a hand in identifying twinks.

I can agree on that. Which is why I personally would vote for certain local boards, even if they're not in my language.

I certainly would myself!

Buying merit just to upvote a local board?
Well, if it's worth that much for someone, I guess he'll have a good reason to have that board, so why not let him have it?

Sure, that might even make sense, but then again we're back to the issue of most newbies not having the possibility to vote at all if the vote is merit-based!

[qwk]

Sure, that might even make sense, but then again we're back to the issue of most newbies not having the possibility to vote at all if the vote is merit-based!

Even newbies would have the ability to vote. All they need is to receive 2 merit first.
In other words: they'd need to show that they're able to contribute to the forum in a meaningful way.
Which is probably not such a bad idea for a barrier to "voting"

I see your point, no doubt, but I don't consider it a strong argument

[hilariousetc]

This doesn't really seem viable and will just be a waste of merits. The only real way we should measure whether a sub board is needed or not is whether there's demand for it by the number of people who are posting in their local thread. Also, finding trusted mods for the new board is often difficult. Any board that doesn't have a moderator (or a very active one) is quickly abused by spammers who realise they can get away with it (see the Chinese Press board that has been overrun with Chinese copy and paste bots and the Vietnamese thread that was 99% farmers copying content from online that wasn't even relevant to anything (and who is going to tell if you can't read Vietnamese).  

[qwk]

Also, finding trusted mods for the new board is often difficult.

A valid point. Suggestion: vote for moderators with merit

[hilariousetc]

Also, finding trusted mods for the new board is often difficult.

A valid point. Suggestion: vote for moderators with merit

Moderators are sometimes voted on for local boards but if you've got a lot of alt accounts that can be skewed. The sad thing is often the abuse in the local boards is not even reported by the native speakers which it will be blatantly obvious to. In fact, many are happy to just engage in it themselves once it becomes obvious they can get away with it. If nobody in that community is reporting the blatant abuse or even partaking in it themselves then there's certainly nobody trusted enough to moderate it and that's the dilemma.

[qwk]

The sad thing is often the abuse in the local boards is not even reported by the native speakers which it will be blatantly obvious to. In fact, many are happy to just engage in it themselves once it becomes obvious they can get away with it. If nobody in that community is reporting the blatant abuse or even partaking in it themselves then there's certainly nobody trusted enough to moderate it and that's the dilemma.

That sounds awful. But then again, it doesn't.
It only means there's boards out there run by crooks for crooks.
They've kind of chosen their own shitholes to sit in.
I don't really see anything too wrong about it.

Obviously, let's say there's a forum "Latin", created by the "Romans". The expectation of someone looking at the forum's title "Latin" would be that it's a nice and cosy place where "Romans" discuss in a civilized manner. If a new user speaks "Latin", he might turn to that forum. Seeing it full of shit-posts, he might then either leave that forum for good and maybe propose a new "Latin2" forum, or he will start cleaning out like Hercules in Augeas' Stables (oh no, that would make him a "Greek", not a "Roman" ).

Either way, he won't end up "stuck" in a shithole.

In other words: the burden of keeping a local board clean is always on the local community, no matter what.