Today marks the launch of our exciting new Community Forum! That’s right, we are migrating the conversation away from Telegram and over to a dedicated and self-hosted forum, built on top of the incredible open-source Discourse forum software.
WHY THE MOVE?
Telegram has been the go-to app for most Bitcoin related communities for many years. We have over 1,000 of you in our group, providing vibrant conversation and discussion around our products. Sadly, in recent times Telegram has become a magnet for scammers, intent on trying to prey on people and steal their Bitcoin. The typical playbook goes something like this:
1. Unsuspecting user has a problem.
2. They ask a question in the main community of a Bitcoin product or project.
3. The scammers monitor these messages and immediately private message the unsuspecting user, pretending to be an admin or member of the company/project.
4. The scammer will attempt to socially engineer the unsuspecting user into giving up their private keys, so they can ‘fix’ their issue for them.
5. As soon as the scammer is able to obtain the private keys, the user’s Bitcoin is immediately stolen.
6. The unsuspecting user has no recourse.
Although we’d all like to tell ourselves we wouldn’t fall for such a scenario, these scammers have become frighteningly efficient ast pulling off these social engineering attacks. All admins and group owners of Bitcoin Telegram communities do what they can to ban impersonators and offer frequent warnings to “Never respond to DMs”, but this unfortunately is not enough to prevent these scams from taking place.
The only way we can protect our users is to move away from Telegram and have our conversation on a platform we host that puts us in full control and, crucially, prevents users from being privately messaged by anyone.
WHAT IS THE COMMUNITY FOR?
The community will serve the same purpose as our Telegram group once did. It will be a place to ask questions, seek support, provide feedback, and stay up to speed with company updates. Our support team will be on hand each day, during typical business hours, to answer any questions, but the hope is that our vibrant and growing community is able to assist one another too. The more conversation we have, the greater our searchable archive becomes, and the faster newcomers can get answers to their questions.
The community forum does not replace our existing ‘official’ support paths, email and our live chat, accessible from our main website and the forum itself. Just tap the blue chat bubble icon in the bottom right corner. Telegram will not be going away entirely either. We’ll be converting our existing group into a read-only one, such that you’re able to stay up to date with company updates via that platform too.
HOW TO GET THE MOST FROM OUR NEW COMMUNITY
Here’s how you can get started with our new community:
1. Visit community.foundation.xyz and sign up via your method of choice. If you don’t want to use one of your existing accounts, like Google, simply enter an email and password. This is a public forum, so take that into consideration before linking or signing up with [email protected].
2. You will then see all of our different discussion categories, ready for you to browse.
3. Want to get caught up with the most recent activity on the community? Click the ‘Activity’ button at the top of the side bar.
4. Got a question, or need help with a Foundation product? Search some key words in the main website banner to see if your query might have already been answered in an existing topic.
5. Clicking on the advanced search icon on the right of the search bar will allow you to customize your search results for greater accuracy.
6. Can’t find an answer to your question? No problem. Click on the category your question relates to, eg, “Passport”, then click “New Topic”.
7. In the box that pops up, type your question. If you are seeking support for a problem with a product, try to be as descriptive as possible. Some categories will have templates to assist you in providing the necessary information. The more info you give, the easier and faster it will be for a member of our team or another member of the community to assist you. Images or videos can be very useful here, but be very cognizant of what you share. This forum is public. If you have an issue that necessitates sharing some sensitive information, do so via our private support options listed above.
8. After creating your topic, be patient and await an answer from someone able to help. You’ll be automatically notified every time someone responds to a topic you have created.
9. Whilst browsing the forum, if you see any topic or content that doesn’t fit within our community guidelines, feel free to ‘Flag‘ the post. This will notify an admin to review the content and take the appropriate action. Admins will always endeavor to neutralize spam and inappropriate content, but the community can also help by being vigilant and flagging anything they see that seems inappropriate.
If you have any feedback or suggestions about our new community, feel free to send us an email, or even better, create a new topic in our ‘Feedback‘ category! We look forward to seeing you over there!