[CHARTS] Brief monthly overview of the local boards activity

[uchegod-21]

Nigeria*
Uchegod-21 [21]

I made 21 posts last month, not because I wanted my post to coincide with the numerical suffix of my name. It is because the Nigerian unofficial local board is like gambling discussion threads where several discussions are happening in one thread. Most times, at my leisure, I will want to make upto 5 posts in my local thread but I will end up making one because I will have to wait for another person to reply before I can post again to avoid spamming. If Nigerian Local Board was to be a full board with child boards, my post count will be higher than 21.
Excimer[375]
When I saw this, I rushed to his profile believing I have seen a high rank high quality poster. But I was surprised to see that he is a full member and has about -7 tag from DT members. Ratimov raised a flag against him and many others supported the flag. So, are the 375 posts not a problem to the Russian board or is he a good quality poster?

[Rikafip]

If Nigerian Local Board was to be a full board with child boards, my post count will be higher than 21.

Not just yours but probably everyone else's there as I can imagine how inconvenient is to write about everything in one topic. Nothing else to do other than remaining active there and hopefully one day you get your own local board

So, are the 375 posts not a problem to the Russian board or is he a good quality poster?

He is a troll that became especially active ever since Russia invaded Ukraine and that explains his high post count.

[Rikafip]

This user is also active in the English section, and the number 375 does not mean that he wrote all of them in the Russian locale.

That shitposter and troll indeed made 375 posts in Russian local board during March, as in that table of the most active users I count only posts written in local boards. His total post count for March is 427 so yeah, he's been active all over the place.

[joker_josue]

The Russian locale has turned into a place where representatives of two nations call each other fascists, and some create topics and admire the deaths of the dead and wish them all sorts of nasty things.

This is unpleasant. We cannot forget that this forum is not about politics, nor about social issues, in a generalized way. It's to debate independently about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Of course, we can talk about issues that affect society, but this should be done in a moderate way, in order to avoid this type of situation.

I hope better days for the Russian local board.

[uchegod-21]

The Russian locale has turned into a place where representatives of two nations call each other fascists, and some create topics and admire the deaths of the dead and wish them all sorts of nasty things.

This is very unpleasant. It looks like there is a kind of cold war ongoing in the Russian board. I noticed it when some Russians started making topics in Meta calling theymos to close Russian board, some called theymos to create a Ukraine board.
I think this is the time for moderators of the board to sit up and regulate the board by deleting anything that will instigate hatred and division in the board.
Excimer has about 8 topics in the first page of the Russian board. It seems he has a motive, I know his activities may not be welcoming to some Russian board users. Some might have ignored him.

[Rikafip]

The Russian locale has recently turned into a home of swearing, trolling and hatred. In 3 years on the forum, I have not seen so much hate as in the last 2 months. Fewer posts are being written about cryptocurrencies and more and more about the politics and hatred of one nation for another.

Sorry to hear that, but honestly I am not surprised that's going on in your local board considering the situation and the fact that both Russians and Ukrainians share one local board. Add on that very lenient moderation here when it comes to trolling, hatred and swearing (even though it sucks what's going on in your board I wouldn't like this forum becoming like some others where you can get banned just for saying someone that he is lying piece of shit or something along those lines) and you get this.

The Russian locale has turned into a place where representatives of two nations call each other fascists, and some create topics and admire the deaths of the dead and wish them all sorts of nasty things.

Is all that stuff at least contained in one child board, or its all over? Anyway, I hope things calm down soon and people focus more on what they have in common rather than what divides them, but realistically speaking I don't think war is ending anytime soon, meaning neither the chaos in Russian board.

I think this is the time for moderators of the board to sit up and regulate the board by deleting anything that will instigate hatred and division in the board.

While it sucks what's been going on there, I am not sure that it would be a good move long term. This forum is one of the rare places where you can say what you think (excluding death threats) without being in the constant fear of getting banned, and if you start making exceptions it might become one.

[Daniel91]

Ratimov, I completely understand you, but obviously nothing can be done or changed about it.
It would be logical for people to discuss crypto topics on a crypto forum, but it is obvious that external circumstances strongly influence people’s emotions and thinking.
Political topics should still be kept where they belong, in politics, and the crypto part of the forum should be free from political debates.
Everything else is freedom of speech.
I want you to soon reach a level where political topics will no longer be important in your lives.

[dkbit98]

Yes, the Russian locale is, in fact, the place not only of Russian citizens, but of all Russian-speaking people from the countries of the former Soviet Union: Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc.

We have similar situation in Croatian local board, people write there from all surrounding countries (Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro...) that speak same or similar languages.. and we still don't have our own moderator.

As for lenient moderation, for the Russian locale it was a very big vulnerability, because thanks to this, trolls could create shitposts for months containing absolute nonsense, provocations, hatred, etc., and no one could do anything about it. As far as I understand, local moderators cannot ban high ranks, this requires the help of global moderators.

How many active local moderators you have in Russian local forum board?
I was taking a look and it is showing xandry and Xal0lex, but I have no idea if both of them are active now.
It's sad to see that some people are fueled with hate and they are using bitcointalk forum as platform for spreading hate to others... nobody replies to them, but they keep posting...

[Xal0lex]

It's sad to see that some people are fueled with hate and they are using bitcointalk forum as platform for spreading hate to others... nobody replies to them, but they keep posting...

The point is that as long as users don't violate forum rules with their posts, no one touches them. Formally, showing hatred is not a violation of the rules. The only thing is that if there is a specific call to violence in the post, such a post should be deleted and the user may get a ban.

Since Russia's war against Ukraine is illegal from the point of view of the United States, such statements on the forum should be deleted and users can be banned.

For example:

• "Russian military: go bomb Ukraine!"
• "You should go join the Russian army to help the war against Ukraine."
• "You should attack Ukrainians."

But such statements (even though they are wrong) are allowed because they do not directly call for violence:

For example:

• "The war against Ukraine is justified."
• "It would strategically be a good idea for Putin to bomb Ukraine."

Specific incitement to violence is forbidden on the forum.

P.S. My post is based on a consultation with theymos.

[joker_josue]

Clear, well, personally, that's how I imagined it. Thanks for the clarification. I'm still worried about another point. From the moment the hostilities began, posts began to appear in the locale with documents of people who, most likely, were participants in the hostilities. Although they are partially smeared, it seems to me that this is doxing and such publications are unacceptable, since they still contain personal information.

Here is an example of a post that I think is doxing:

Is this a violation of the rules and should such posts be deleted?

But how did these guys get that information!?
If it wasn't published by yourself, it's clearly breaking the rules! They must be erased.

[theymos]

Is this a violation of the rules and should such posts be deleted?

In general, we consider doxxing to be linking of a pseudonymous identity with a real-life identity:

Personal information is defined as anything which links a user's online identity (username, email, etc.) to their meatspace identity, excluding links that the person himself has posted.

If that ID was claimed to belong to some forum member, then that'd be doxxing. But because it stands alone, we don't consider it doxxing.

Separately, it's not allowed to post things that are especially security-sensitive:

anything that the legacy insecure government/banking system requires to be secret is not allowed anywhere. This includes social security numbers, credit card numbers, and certain account numbers.

If those images contain info which would be very useful in stealing that person's identity or committing similar fraud, then perhaps they should not be allowed under this rule. I don't think they contain such info, though I'm not 100% sure.

Also separately, if info about some person is posted with the implication that some sort of violence should be committed against them, then that would not be allowed because incitement isn't allowed. For example, this would be too much like incitement: "Here's a bad person's photo. Maybe someone should do something about them." I read (via Google Translate) light_warrior's post as (disappointingly) hateful, but I don't read it as incitement.

So I don't think that the post should be deleted.

[OgNasty]

When the response to someone breaking the rules is urging forgiveness, do the rules really matter at all?  It seems more like virtue signaling to me while pretending to allow free speech when in reality the forum is heavily moderated for things like cryptography usage outside of Bitcoin.  It's really sad to be honest, but I understand that it's a big job to keep bad people from making inappropriate posts that violate the rules.  It's easier to just take this route of making excuses and continue censoring what you want while allowing members to be targeted and harassed under the guise of free speech when in reality it's just pawning off the responsibility on the community using the trust network, which is empowered by politics and heavily manipulated, not to mention does nothing to stop the underlying abuse and instead causes more abuse to those who stand up and do the right thing.

[dkbit98]

Is this a violation of the rules and should such posts be deleted?

Who exactly was doxxed here?
If that is some image picked up from internet/telegram showing random guy that has no links with any profile in this forum than I don't think this is the reason for ban or deletion, if post was made in Politics section like it was.
I would never post something like this in bitcointalk forum, but that's a different story.

I have always believed that this forum forbids any personal information by default. These images clearly read the following personal information

How can you read full name and other personal information from that documents when everything important was blurred, except maybe his address and date of birth?

[naim027]

How can you read full name and other personal information from that documents when everything important was blurred, except maybe his address and date of birth?

Whoever edited this photo, forget to blur these sections. Watch carefully, You will know everything.

<removed>

Well, I agree partially. But, I believe personal documents should not be allowed to share. Even if it was shared before on the internet. This will spread it more and it can be used for bad things.

[fillippone]

Obviously, you do not pay attention to the little things in the encodings of Russian passports, just like the one who tried to crookedly blur the name of this person. The Russian passport of the new sample, like the foreign passport that is issued to citizens of Russia, has a special encoding at the bottom, in which the full name of the person is duplicated in Latin letters. So, looking at this encoding, below we read the following code:

If I am not mistaken that kind of data repetition is quite common also on other passports. So yes, I guess the person posting those picture made an incredible error not making that part unreadable, unless, of course, it is not an error and was on purpose.

[theymos]

- Passport number and series.

I think this is a sufficient set to carry out some kind of illegal activity. In Russia, with the help of this data, can find out even more information about a person using various specialized services. Or use this data for various registrations and so on.
...
With this information, you can get a lot of data on this person: where he is registered at the place of residence, the exact address, his tax number, and a huge pile of all kinds of information.

Thank you for the additional context. In light of that, I agree that the post contains data that is too security-sensitive, and it should therefore not be allowed.

[joker_josue]

Thank you for the additional context. In light of that, I agree that the post contains data that is too security-sensitive, and it should therefore not be allowed.

Excellent attitude! 
It remains now for the other moderators to be aware of these situations and do the same to remove this content.

One thing I learned from this forum is that it is a forum that always seeks to fight fraud and theft attempts! Admitting that in the beginning, when I met Bitcoin, if it wasn't for this forum, I could have been cheated and lost a lot of BTC. I believe these values must continue, no matter how attempts to steal or spread sensitive information that could harm others occur.

I think we all feel safe using BitcoinTalk. And we hope this continues for many years to come.

[dkbit98]

Obviously, you do not pay attention to the little things in the encodings of Russian passports, just like the one who tried to crookedly blur the name of this person. The Russian passport of the new sample, like the foreign passport that is issued to citizens of Russia, has a special encoding at the bottom, in which the full name of the person is duplicated in Latin letters. So, looking at this encoding, below we read the following code

I tried to look at all personal details but I probably forgot to check those encoding on the bottom, it's true that they can reveal more information about owner of the passport.
Some people remember when someone hacked Binance exchange and revealed all personal information with people holding passports in their hand, with details that were partially blurred.
I think information like that was even posted in bitcointalk forum and we probably posted similar things in Investigation board before.

[naim027]

Thank you for the additional context. In light of that, I agree that the post contains data that is too security-sensitive, and it should therefore not be allowed.

Glad to see that you have removed that information. I hope no one will dig out that information using other tools like ninjastic. Also, I am not surprised. Because I believe, If I don't share my own information and I don't give anyone the right to share, It should not be allowed to share anywhere on the internet. Even if I KYC'ed on any platform, If I don't violate any rules. They don't have the right to share my personal information anywhere. Even if I violate the rules, They cannot share it publicly. They might share with Police. That's a different case.

[fillippone]

Hey @Rikafip. Stop Slacking! Where have you gone? How comes that it is almost the end of the month, and we both haven't published our graphs (yet??)