Suggestions to Improve the India forum

[newIndia]

More than a year ago, I requested for a moderator for India forum - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3125174.0. From that thread itself, it is evident that the sub was turning into a garbage. Since then, due to constant reporting and monitoring, the main board of the sub has improved a lot. Scams are also under control due to enabled trust after this request - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5044745.0. I guess, it is time to reshape the sub for better management. Below are my suggestions...

India Forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=89.0

1. Please unpin all the pinned threads except for Welcome to Indians. Information in rest of the threads are mostly outdated.

2. Merge Mining (India) with main board, i.e. India. Last post on it is on July 31, 2019 and that sub is pretty inactive for long.

3. Merge Marketplace (India) with main board, i.e. India. Content has no distinct difference than the main board.

4. Do not allow thousands of threads inside Regional Languages (India). Have one thread for each language.

5. Merge Press & News from India with main board, i.e. India. Content has no distinct difference than the main board.

6. Alt Coins (India) does not serve any extra purpose over Announcements (Altcoins). So, better merge it with that. At the same time, allow basic Alt coin discussions (not announcement or promotion) on main board, i.e. India.

7. Merge Buyer/ Seller Reputations (India) with main board, i.e. India. Content has no distinct difference than the main board.

8. Off-Topic (India) does not serve any extra purpose over Off-topic. So, better merge it with that.

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[logfiles]

I don't know what criteria admin uses to select mods but most certainly a few busy boards could use more mods. For example The mod assigned to the beginners and Help board has been offline since April last year yet that board is so busy at times with people who don't know what to post and where to post.

I believe admin has been aware of it for a while but for some reason, it doesn't seem to be a pressing issue.

[Daniel91]

In my personal opinion, all local sections of this forum should get their own moderator.
I'm from Croatia and walso tried a few times to get our local moderator but without success.
It's interesting to see that some local forums with less activity have moderators (for example polish and Japanese) but some local forums with more activity don't have, like CRoatian or your local forum.
I hope admins will correct this soon.

[sujonali1819]

First of all an Indian needs to be a moderator. Then the language of the Local Board should be local which means that the language of the Indian Local Board should be Hindi. But The Indian local board is running in english language. If the language is English in local board then why would people come to post on the local board? They get everything in English everywhere. So I think language of local boards should be local so that people feel free to post anything in own native language.

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

There were numerous concerns regarding the Indian board last year right after Benson was removed from the position of moderator. The removal of moderator has been seen favorable for spammers, shitposters, translation abusers and malicious link spammers to ruin the board completely over the year. But every one of the like minded people joined forces against them and drove them completely from the board. This is why the board is better to read today. I am still under the concrete idea that we don't need a moderator as majority of the posts being reported are either moved to correct sub-boards or being trashed based on the importance of posts. The board is far from being very active considering the recent ban activities undertaken by the Indian government. Apart from that, there is still good discussion on legalities and taxation taking place from time to time and we, the reporters are controlling the board from being ruined again.

There does seem to be one merit source lurking in the dark, but we need an additional merit source to bring more interest in the poster's mind to contribute positively to the board. A merit source can also help other posters to rank up if they try to contribute positively. I am still depending on my earned smerits and the maximum I can giveaway is just a mere 1-2 for very good posts in the local section. Few posts present there deserves more merits but we are depending on global merit sources to merit them which isn't happening.

Here are my thoughts regarding your reshaping/merging of certain sub-boards to main boards :

1. The pinned topics serve no interest or knowledge to new-comers and they are certainly out-dated with the recent legalization all over the country. Topics like

• Bitcoin Resources - Consolidated List (India Specific) topic is absolutely outdated. I have made a topic Bitcoin Resources - Consolidate List (India Specific) v2.O which is very similar to original topic and they have been updated with latest links. I have reported my topic to be pinned and remove the older topic but the report was left unhandled. My topic would could serve as an alternative to the older topic which might be helpful to newbies who visit the Indian section.
• People pay your Taxes are not really needed to be pinned in the current situation and there topic seems to be filled with promotional spams which is hard to be maintained since the OP is inactive for past 2 years.
• Some agreements for the India forum has already been replaced with Unofficial List of Indian Sub-Forum FAQ, Rules, Guidelines, Resources so the latter doesn't serve its purpose.

2. Though the mining section is literally inactive from July, we could be having a section instead of posting all the mining stuffs in main board. If the case regarding legalization ends with positive note, we would be seeing more and more Indian miners coming into practice. At that point of time, the sub-board would really be helpful.

3. Marketplace (India) serves its purpose of a separate board. If we were to merge Marketplace with main board, it would be a huge clutter and certainly might be very difficult for traders to keep up with the topics. AFAIK, the marketplace section is quite active considering the Mining section and having a separate board is justified.

4. All the threads present in the Regional Language board are justified and it is good to see people contributing to the section on a better scale. If the Regional Languages were to be reported/moderated heavily we wouldn't be seeing any good thread being posted there. Some of the good posts from the section comes from the Regional Language board and they shouldn't be heavily reported upon.

5. The Press & News from India section could be merged upon to the main Indian board.

6.

Alt Coins (India) does not serve any extra purpose over Announcements (Altcoins). So, better merge it with that. At the same time, allow basic Alt coin discussions (not announcement or promotion) on main board, i.e. India.

This statement is completely false and must never be done so. For over many years, Altcoins sections from various active local boards have been serving its purpose to host Announcements in their own Regional Languages. For instance, if you consider the Altcoins (Bahasa Indonesia), Aльтepнaтивныe кpиптoвaлюты and Altcoins (Français) the native Altcoin boards from various local sections has Announcements in them. The Altcoins (India) is a must have board considering people are still making translations for coin announcements in Hindi.

7. Off-Topic (India) could be merged onto to main Off-Topic board but to the contrary why should we change these boards right now? If posting every topic related to India in main Indian board, it would make them an absolute trash and we wouldn't be able to read any other topics present in them actually.

Then the language of the Local Board should be local which means that the language of the Indian Local Board should be Hindi. But The Indian local board is running in english language. If the language is English in local board then why would people come to post on the local board? They get everything in English everywhere. So I think language of local boards should be local so that people feel free to post anything in own native language.

Note that India is a diversified country in terms of languages and traditions. We have a huge set of languages to be followed and to keep everything organized and connected we would be following English. There are 2 languages to be followed nation wide and English being one among them. The universities and high schools run with English, so anyone with basic study would be following both their regional language and also English. Apart from that, in order to connect with more people from various states we would be speaking English. Hence, the main section of India should be in English to connect with large audience.

[hugeblack]

Since most posts are in English, it is easy for global moderators to check posts and delete spam.
It will be more complicated if the posts are in the local language. Thus it can be considered as one of the English boards without mod.

But The Indian local board is running in English language.

I was surprised by this. This board is more like a country board than a local one.

[leowonderful]

I was almost going to comment about not merging the Indian Off-Topic board over to the main one, but on second inspection it does seem somewhat appropriate considering all of the (relatively few) threads in there seem to be in English. Merging the Indian Off-Topic board to the main one shouldn't cause too many issues with making things too messy and hard to navigate in this case. Shouldn't cause too many problems because there just seems to be so little activity in that particular board as well.

[Halab]

There does seem to be one merit source lurking in the dark, but we need an additional merit source to bring more interest in the poster's mind to contribute positively to the board. A merit source can also help other posters to rank up if they try to contribute positively. I am still depending on my earned smerits and the maximum I can giveaway is just a mere 1-2 for very good posts in the local section. Few posts present there deserves more merits but we are depending on global merit sources to merit them which isn't happening.

I'm sure you know this topic : [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source
And you can do like Croatians and Filipinos with these topics: Zbirni topic za davanje merita za kvalitetne postove and Full List of UnderMerited/Unmerited Posts (Pilipinas) (even if the last one is no longer active). I watch them and I'm notified when there is a new message. I do not guarantee a rain of merits in the Indian section, but if it can help...

[malevolent]

First of all an Indian needs to be a moderator. Then the language of the Local Board should be local which means that the language of the Indian Local Board should be Hindi. But The Indian local board is running in english language. If the language is English in local board then why would people come to post on the local board? They get everything in English everywhere. So I think language of local boards should be local so that people feel free to post anything in own native language.

English is no less important than Hindi in India countrywide, and on the Internet there are probably more English speakers from India than Hindi speakers. You can always post in the regional child-board.

[Coyster]

But The Indian local board is running in English language.

I was surprised by this. This board is more like a country board than a local one.

You do not have to be surprised about this, the English language alongside Hindi are the two most popular languages in India, though Hindi has more speakers than the English language, but the both languages can be regarded as India's official language.

So if English language is used in their local board, it's as a result of the fact that probably majority of them in there are part of the percentage that speak English more than Hindi, even in real life, even though it's a bit strange since its called a "Local board" for users who struggle with English to start off there. I do not think they need a specific moderator since this is the case, any MOD can from time to time go there and regulate what's going on there easily as the language used is the forums official language.

[akhjob]

~
1. Please unpin all the pinned threads except for Welcome to Indians. Information in rest of the threads are mostly outdated.
2. Merge Mining (India) with main board, i.e. India. Last post on it is on July 31, 2019 and that sub is pretty inactive for long.
~
5. Merge Press & News from India with main board, i.e. India. Content has no distinct difference than the main board.
~
8. Off-Topic (India) does not serve any extra purpose over Off-topic. So, better merge it with that.

I agree that the Indian Board needs a moderator and also agree with parts of your suggestions mentioned above. However, I wouldn't want to see all the subboards be merged to the Main Board. I clearly don't want the Marketplace(India) and the Hindi translation bounty threads of Altcoin(India) mixed up with the Main Board.

Then the language of the Local Board should be local which means that the language of the Indian Local Board should be Hindi. But The Indian local board is running in english language. If the language is English in local board then why would people come to post on the local board? They get everything in English everywhere. So I think language of local boards should be local so that people feel free to post anything in own native language.

As Heisenberg mentioned India is a diverse country in terms of language and traditions and in order to connect with the entire nation, English will be the better option. Afterall English is an official language of India. I am a Tamil native, who doesn't know Hindi but can understand Tamil, Malayalam and English. If the Indian Main Board is in Hindi, I (& others like me) will be forced out of the Indian Board or restricted to only Regional Languages child board. And btw I believe that only very rare few Indian who are aware of crypto doesn't know English while many Southern Indians who are aware of crypto doesn't know Hindi.

And just by conversing in the local language, we cant increase the activity in the Indian Board. We can achieve that only through increased participants.

[erikalui]

Except for the Marketplace, Altcoins, Off-topic sections, all other sections can be merged but at the same time I don't see the Regional boards having spammers. Press releases and other threads are not so active so merging them would be the best. In any case, people keep posting news in the main thread now. Off-topic section need not be merged as the topics relate to festive greetings and other things related to the country only. 

The reason there being more posts in English rather than Hindi in the Indian board is that most prefer typing in English but the same would speak in Hindi. Many don't like reading Hindi and rather prefer typing Hindi in English. It's just the after effect of the British lol.

Moderators are definitely needed for every board and Benson was pretty inactive even when he was the mod. Having one mod also would be tough as the mod needs to be able to understand the languages to delete spam.

There could be a Politics section added like the Russian board has one so that people don't cluster the main board discussing about politics as nowadays people are posting news and added the term "bitcoin" to make it not look like an off-topic thread.

[teosanru]

First of all an Indian needs to be a moderator. Then the language of the Local Board should be local which means that the language of the Indian Local Board should be Hindi. But The Indian local board is running in english language. If the language is English in local board then why would people come to post on the local board? They get everything in English everywhere. So I think language of local boards should be local so that people feel free to post anything in own native language.

I think the problem isn't bitcointalk the problem is with Indians ourselves. We don't really feel the need to talk in hindi ourselves as we barely use Hindi over the web while communicating because we don't have hindi on our keyboards. The best we would communicate would be in So called "HINGLISH" "jo kuchh aise likhi jaati hai" and this would be pretty subjective because has no standard.

There could be a Politics section added like the Russian board has one so that people don't cluster the main board discussing about politics as nowadays people are posting news and added the term "bitcoin" to make it not look like an off-topic thread.

I agree with this. Most of the post we are seeing in Indian discussion are regarding Politics and it's effect on cryptocurrencies better to give it a separate child board.

There does seem to be one merit source lurking in the dark, but we need an additional merit source to bring more interest in the poster's mind to contribute positively to the board. A merit source can also help other posters to rank up if they try to contribute positively. I am still depending on my earned smerits and the maximum I can giveaway is just a mere 1-2 for very good posts in the local section. Few posts present there deserves more merits but we are depending on global merit sources to merit them which isn't happening.

Heisenberg_hunter is contributing pretty nicely to the local board by distributing Merits. But he is right here, I see a lot of local boards flooded with merit sources especially Philippine board and Bahasa board. Indians might be in a somewhat less majority on the forum but an additional merit source would greatly help.

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

...snip...

Yes, I am very much aware of the Reporting unmerited posts topic and if I am right I have suggested over 3-4 posts from the Indian section which could deserve more merits from merit sources. But the problem is actually present with majority of Indian people as many of the quality posters hailing from India are not really willing to share their native/country and would like to remain anonymous among the English boards. If they were to contribute more towards the local, we would be having much more activity than other very inactive local boards. I would like to thank you for the initiave to merit the posts in Indian local, but if Indian forum members were to be notified of having a source I guess they would be contributing much more to the board than they are doing right now. For instance if we take Bitlover10 as an example, they have managed to rank up to Full Member only by contributing in the Indian section and as per the stats around 60% of the merits which were received by them were from Indian board due to their quality posts.

Regarding English being used as a primary language all over the Indian board, we have a lot of languages to be followed but all those languages can never be understood by each and every Indian.

For instance,

• Hindi is spoken by 53% of the whole Indian population
• Bengali and Telugu by 8% of the population
• Tamil by 6% of the population

But if you need to connect all these people English is the primary language provided they have a basic high school education. For example, a North Indian (Hindi speaking) can never live in Southern part of India without knowing English and vice versa.

So if English language is used in their local board, it's as a result of the fact that probably majority of them in there are part of the percentage that speak English more than Hindi, even in real life, even though it's a bit strange since its called a "Local board" for users who struggle with English to start off there.

Indians who use internet would never struggle with English, hence we really don't need to worry about that problem.

Either the problem lies with appointment of moderator or with the merits, all we need is the regular handling of our reports by global mods which is happening right now. The board is very much controllable with our reports and on the other hand the board is more readable than before and we would like that to be continued. AFAIK moderator is needed only for the proper functioning of the sub-board, trash spam, move the topics to exact sub-sections and almost everything is happening with our reports. If that doesn't happen in future we would likely need a dedicated Indian moderator for the board.

P.S Of my ~900 reports,there should be around 700 reports only from Indian section and around 650-675 of them were handled which is quite good for the board on the whole. I started reporting in the Indian sub-board right when I came to know about the "Report to Moderator" function in Feb 2018 and from the 25 unhandled reports which I have right now, 10+ should be during Benson period.

[Rotten Egg]

There does seem to be one merit source lurking in the dark, but we need an additional merit source to bring more interest in the poster's mind to contribute positively to the board.

Are you talking about a merit source dedicated to Indian sub-forum? Who are you pointing at here? Why should a merit source be lurking in the dark?

[malevolent]

Are you talking about a merit source dedicated to Indian sub-forum? Who are you pointing at here? Why should a merit source be lurking in the dark?

Theymos has never made the merit source list public (to non-merit sources) in case the latter wanted to beg from merit sources to give them merits. Of course with time it's easy to figure who most of them are.