Why our local board isn’t growing? Maybe it’s the language?

[Finestream]

This is a big community, and the Philippines is actually one of the oldest local boards here. But honestly, I noticed that our numbers didn’t really grow much through the years.

While checking some stats from Rikafip’s thread, I saw that Nigeria wasn’t even listed back in 2020 yet now they’re number one in terms of activity (post). That got me curious. I visited their local board, and I noticed that most (if not all) of their topics are written in English.

Just like us, Nigeria also has many different dialects, but they still choose to communicate in English. Meanwhile, here in the Philippines, English is also widely used especially since we have a huge BPO industry, so I started wondering: could this be one of the reasons why our local board didn’t grow as much?

Maybe because most of our posts are in Tagalog, many non-locals or even Filipinos from other regions can’t join the discussion easily. So I’m suggesting we try posting more in English so that anyone (even from outside our local) can understand and participate.

I’m bringing this here because I’d like to hear your thoughts. This isn’t just for me but for the overall growth of our local board and the forum itself.
What do you guys think, is this a worthy suggestion, or should we just keep posting in Tagalog as usual?

Below are the comparison - 2020 vs 2025

2020


2025

[Ambatman]

So I’m suggesting we try posting more in English so that anyone (even from outside our local) can understand and participate.

Why call it a local board if English is going to be considered a major
There's a reason we don't have the English or US local board.

I visited their local board, and I noticed that most (if not all) of their topics are written in English.

We do because any of us that can access the Net understands English
And pidgin our widely used isn't that different.


Besides Russian don't use English and they are still second.


Judging from both stats, it's not that Nigeria local board Just grew other boards activities fell.

[Finestream]

So I’m suggesting we try posting more in English so that anyone (even from outside our local) can understand and participate.

Why call it a local board if English is going to be considered a major
There's a reason we don't have the English or US local board.

It really depends on the country you’re in. Maybe in some countries they don’t practice English that much, but here in the Philippines, it’s pretty well used. From elementary up to college, we study English and it’s a big part of communication, memos, public announcements, all that stuff are mostly in English.

In fact, even our laws are written in English, so it’s something we’ve always been familiar with.

Our country has over a hundred dialects, but English feels like the national language, even though they say it’s Tagalog. Manila is just a small part compared to the lands of the Visayans and Mindanaoans who mostly speak Bisaya or other dialects, so for many of us, English is actually more comfortable to use.

In fact, a lot of South Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, and Taiwanese students come here to study English because tuition is cheap and the teachers are really good.

Sorry for explaining this long, I just want to emphasize that we really understand English well  so it’s only right if most of our topics here are written in English.

[Charles-Tim]

Indian board is in English but you have posts than them monthly.

[EarnOnVictor]

I visited their local board, and I noticed that most (if not all) of their topics are written in English.

The reason is that Nigeria is not like the Philippines. The country is so diverse to the point that we can't understand each other's language.

This is a country with over 250 ethnic groups, over 370 tribes and over 500 indigenous languages. That's complex!

This is why we converse with a neutral language, which is our official language (English) and another language called Pigin or broken English (it was also derived from the English language). The choice is ours to use either of the two.

[LoyceV]

What's the point of a local board if you don't use the local language? In that case, you could just as well post on the English boards. The Dutch board is as dead as it gets, and I don't mind. "We" just use the English boards.

[alani123]

Greek is way down there because we don't have a large forum culture sadly. There's maybe a handful of people in this forum that speak Greek and are willing to participate.

There might be a handful others that are here for business and therefore since they work with the international market don't need to worry so much about the Greek sub-forum.

It's sad to realize that the biggest communities for crypto in Greece are still in mainstream social media like discord and Facebook...

[lovesmayfamilis]

This might be a bit confusing, but why don't you think each person in the Nigerian section has only one account? I'd highly doubt it. Now, if you consider that each person has multiple accounts (we need to consider greed here), you'll see a completely different number of users on this local board. Furthermore, recent threads in the reputation section suggest that some characters from other countries are simply lying about their Nigerian origins. I even know how to improve your situation with the number of users in your local section: you need to find a generous source of merit and organize some kind of cooking contest.

[Ultegra134]

Greek is way down there because we don't have a large forum culture sadly. There's maybe a handful of people in this forum that speak Greek and are willing to participate.

There might be a handful others that are here for business and therefore since they work with the international market don't need to worry so much about the Greek sub-forum.

It's sad to realize that the biggest communities for crypto in Greece are still in mainstream social media like discord and Facebook...

I was about to post as well, but you were first. The Greek community is way underdeveloped, and even ourselves aren't spending too much time and effort in the local board. There's only a handful of us, but how active have we been? There's a large cryptocurrency community in many other platforms, apart from those you mentioned, such as Telegram. The Greek Binance community is over 7,000 members, but how many are here?

Local boards belong to local people, the reason some are speaking English is due to diverse dialects etc, just like others mentioned, but using English in the Greek board for instance is completely unnecessary and stops being "local" anymore. Perhaps the same applies to the Philippines board, which is mentioned in this case. I personally wouldn't want it either.

[Ruttoshi]

You are to encourage your local board members to post in your LB more in order to increase your LB activities. Another thing that can discourage them from posting in your LB is if there is one merit source with small amount of merits been assigned to him. Members from your LB will prefer posting in general boards where there are more than enough merit sources.

Nigeria uses more of English because it's our general language that everyone can communicate with easily and understand each other. Some Nigerians down here cannot even speak their dialect because they're fucking use to speaking only English language in their houses.

[Asiska02]

In the Naija local board, both English language and pidgin is being used because in some people, you won’t see them understanding both of them and can speak it fluently. So in order not to sound discriminatory, both are allowed to pass information there. The English language is our official language in Nigeria and anyone that went to school understands and can communicate with it better.

The pidgin which was coined out from English language is mostly understood by the uneducated ones as some of them find it hard to communicate in English language. That made even the educated ones to learn the pidgin in the local society and communicate well with them, but not all Nigerians can still communicate fully in pidgin without adding English language. As for the Naija LB here in the forum, I think almost all of us are educated and can communicate with English language but not all can communicate fluently in pidgin, so there is no need to be strict in communicating in English language there because it won’t fancy all Naija board members in the forum to communicate there.

The problem in your local board is not the language you guys are speaking there, welcome both languages and don’t make it compulsory to speak only the local dialects when not everyone might understand it there. Also have a generous merit source that will constantly give out merit to appreciate the effort of the members there. If not, most of them will prefer to post in the general board where they get to receive merit for their effort contributing to those boards.

[AbuBhakar]

You should post this topic on our local board because this is an issue which the user on that local board can answer.

I think the main reason is the lack of merit distribution. Pilipinas board is very active in the past before the merit system was introduced and also during the time that we have a merit source @cabalism31. The activity becomes low after the merit source becomes inactive since there’s no way you can rank up if you just keep posting in the local board.

Right now we already have a merit source. I believe we are already on the recovery stage.

[Rikafip]

Just like us, Nigeria also has many different dialects, but they still choose to communicate in English.

English is one of the official languages in Nigeria so its not so strange that they decided to use that one for forum communication. And the same goes for Indian local.

Maybe because most of our posts are in Tagalog, many non-locals or even Filipinos from other regions can’t join the discussion easily. So I’m suggesting we try posting more in English so that anyone (even from outside our local) can understand and participate.

One of the reasons for the drop in activity on your local board is the lack of merit. Your board has been under merited for years, with a merit/post ratio similar to the off-topic section, and only recently has this started to change. Whether we like it or not, people tend to post more in boards where there’s a better chance of earning merit, as confirmed by some who have tried to infiltrate local boards with a lot of merit being shared.

There's drop in activity across the forum in general, so what's happening in your local is not an expection at all.

What's the point of a local board if you don't use the local language? In that case, you could just as well post on the English boards. The Dutch board is as dead as it gets, and I don't mind. "We" just use the English boards.

Imho, having your own local board is not just about using your own langauge, but also talking about topics that are specific for that country like laws, payment options, events etc.

[Churchillvv]

The major reason I feel the local board, I mean yours isn’t growing as you think is probably because the level of engagement with bitcoin and real live connections about bitcoin is low, on the streets of Nigeria today if bitcoin crashes even a kid who has little knowledge of it will be talking about it like he has an investment in bitcoin which probably will drive people in Nigeria to want to even belong to the forum if the have a clue of it.
Earnonvictor said it all that Nigeria is too diverse, multicultural, multilingual nation, probably the largest multilingual country, so English as secondary language is the major language which we all understand but then to privatize it we use broken English (pidgin) which is usually, sometimes if you read in our local board you will probably be confused since some things aren’t clear English.

[Natalim]

I think there’s no problem with how you post in the local section just go with whatever posting style you’re comfortable with.

You can use Tagalog or English, I’m pretty sure the active members will still respond. Most of them also join campaigns and post outside the local boards, so they can easily understand both languages.

I get that Filipino is our main language, but English is also widely used here, so no worries.
Just post in the way you’re most comfortable with.

lastly, this isn't a topic that needs to be raise outside the local,

[BitBakerr1]

I believe any country that is getting involved in cryptocurrency more will surely have more members here in this forum and again introducing people to cryptocurrency, right now cryptocurrency is one of the biggest market in the world and Bitcoin investment is one of the best investment in the world and people are introducing it to there friends and family so they can also invest any country that is good at introducing there friends and family about cryptocurrency will surely have more growth in this forum.
In case you don't know the forum is the biggest and best when it comes to cryptocurrency discussion any one that is very active in this forum will surely know a lot about cryptocurrency.
OP if your country is really interested in cryptocurrency especially the young people then believe me a lot of them will find there way to this forum and they will become very active in other to no more about cryptocurrency.
Nigeria citizens especially the young people are very eager about cryptocurrency and that is the major reason you see them very active in this forum they just love cryptocurrency investment and they want to know more is not because they speak English other countries speak English too.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

This is a big community, and the Philippines is actually one of the oldest local boards here. But honestly, I noticed that our numbers didn’t really grow much through the years.

In the local Spanish forum, we have it even worse. Spanish is the second most spoken native language in the world, and third in the overall ranking after English and Chinese. Consider how poor the activity is in this forum, taking that into account.

One of the reasons for the drop in activity on your local board is the lack of merit. Your board has been under merited for years, with a merit/post ratio similar to the off-topic section, and only recently has this started to change. Whether we like it or not, people tend to post more in boards where there’s a better chance of earning merit, as confirmed by some who have tried to infiltrate local boards with a lot of merit being shared.

I don't think that reason is crucial. Since I was appointed to the merit source, I have seen two or three more accounts on my local board participating constructively and actively in it, but little else.

[Joy- maker]

since you noticed that your local board number is not growing the solution is very simple, encourage your local board members to at least be contributing to the local board, since it help to increase activities in the local board, and your local board merit sources should also be generous in distributing merits to good and quality posts in the local board, because when merits are been distributed appropriately in the local board it will encourage members of your board to be actively posting in the local to increase activities. Because that's what we're do there in our local board, and if you notice very well immediately three merit source was allocated to Nigeria board by theymos, members of the local board was actively posting in the local board since there will more merits to be distributed, and that was how Nigeria board got to where it is today.

Concerning the language aspect, Nigerian's use more of English than pidgin in posting, because English is our general language, while pidgin is more like an alternative language since we don't have one common language aside English and pidgin, and secondly it's not all Nigeria local board members that are good in writing posts in pidgins, even myself I always find it difficult to write my posts in pidgins that's why you see me using English to write my posts on the local board.

And I put it to you that, it's not because will Nigerians mostly write out post's in English that is making our activities to grow all time, just know that as we introduce other Nigerian's to cryptocurrency will also introduce them to bitcointalk where they can gain more knowledge about cryptocurrency, bitcoin precisely.  And by doing such more members are been added to the local board and when you plus the existing members and the new members together you see that activities will increase in the local board, since more posters have been added to the existing ones.

[Rikafip]

I don't think that reason is crucial. Since I was appointed to the merit source, I have seen two or three more accounts on my local board participating constructively and actively in it, but little else.

I didn't say its crucial, but I do believe its one of the reasons. The main reason is obviously the fact that forums are not as popular as they used to be and majorify of local boards aren't as active as they used to be years ago and nothing much can be done about that.

Since I was appointed to the merit source, I have seen two or three more accounts on my local board participating constructively and actively in it, but little else.

I am not surprised that situation didn't change much in your board as Spanish local had pretty good merit per post ratio most of the time, while Phillipines struggled for years. Just to compare, for years they were on ~0.1 merit per post ratio while yours was 0.8-1 merit per post in 12 months period.

[CryptSafe]

Means of communication in the local board should not be a problem but activities is what makes the board lively. As long as a local board is concerned, they are free to communicate with any of their local dialect as it pleases them and it is their choice to choose which is best for them. But in some cases where the local board has so many local language or native tongue, they can communicate in English so that other of their locals could hear them and also contribute to their discussion. Just like what EarnOnVictor has said about the Nigerian local board, that is what it is that is the reason why the local board grew very fast as they were very active in discussions and other activities ongoing on their local board.

Another thing I would say which I have observed is that the Nigerian locals also do events for their local board members which also attracts their members to their local board regularly to take part in the contests and competition which they host regularly and all these contributes to the growth and activeness of the local board members. It is not magic but reality, all these activities are what keeps the community together. A local board without events and activities to attract her members home would likely not be lively that much.
What I will say  here is that you can try initiate events that could make your locals frequently visit the local board and keep it active.