If the rumours are to be believed, then I would presume it would have to do with her refusing to give him the $10,000 or at least trying to persuade him to not go to the strip club. Although, I'm not entirely sure I agree with your opinion about there having to be a reason. Some people are just dicks, and hurt those that are closest to them, I've seen it, and there absolutely doesn't have to be a reason for someone to harm someone else, well at least not something that they're responsible for, usually it's the attacker that has the issues.

Personally, I've never liked Jon Jones, and quite frankly I'm happy he's just a memory in UFC. Hopefully, he stays that way, and if he is/has been found guilty, then I'd like to see the book thrown at him. I don't get why celebrities, and basically rich people tend to get away with serious crimes like this.

Surely Fury is relishing the idea of fighting Usyk instead of Joshua for the belts too, since I would like to think there would be less risk of getting knock out, although I don't think it'll be any easier for Fury, however he'll probably get a kick out of fighting someone as technical as Usyk, since throughout his career he seems to the one with the better technical ability. I don't see how Joshua wins the rematch, Usyk moves his head constantly, and Joshua isn't exactly the most accurate with his big punches, and seems to struggle with fighters that are quick, and have good footwork.

This Fury fight against Wilder is going to be nerve wracking, I just have a feeling there's a potential banana skin here for Fury, he can't be caught napping otherwise he'll be literally napping on the canvas. I don't think it's going to go like round two vs Wilder, I actually think it'll be slightly more competitive like the first bout, though I personally had Fury winning that despite the late knock down.

This fight does have the feeling that Dana is looking to ease Curtis back into the limelight, and not give him too hard of a fight after being knocked out by Derrick last time out. Though, I'll be honest it's usually these types of fight that my  bets fall victim too. Although, I'm still confident in Curtis he'll be wanting to prove a point that the knockout he suffered last time was a blip, and hopefully start that hype train again. I quite like Curtis' personality outside of fighting, he seems like a genuinely good guy.

I disagree, and think this is a misconception of sorts. I think it's reasonable to say that the longer you've been here, and the more experience you have with Bitcoin, the more knowledgeable you are likely going to be about Bitcoin. Also, due to your longevity here, you'll likely be somewhat respected or hold some sort of higher rank here. So, it's far more likely that a seasoned user here is going to be talking about technical things, than a newbie is. At least, with any sort of accuracy. However, there have been examples of a new user or a newer user than expected does come, and talk quite in detail about the technical aspects of Bitcoin, and they usually get showered in merits.

There's also quite a few users that frequent the technical sections that have more merit than activity/posts.

Depends what you mean, care to elaborate what you mean by "application". Since that could mean a whole lot of different things, but I'm assuming your asking about storing your Bitcoin? I.e a wallet that you can deposit, and withdraw your Bitcoin from?

However, if you are just asking what's the best way to apply the Blockchain, then your answer is absolutely going to be Bitcoin. There are other real world scenarios which you could apply it too, and this has happened, I know of several different universities which are using it for various different things, but the Blockchain while having other uses, was primarily developed for Bitcoin to be used as a currency, and the Blockchain to transparently show every transaction, and tie in with the Proof of Work model that the miners use, to verify each transaction that is broadcast to the network. So, really it's ideal application would be Bitcoin.

I'm excited for Ortega. I'll be honest, I haven't always routed for him, especially against the Korean Zombie, but my word did he prove me wrong on that night. One of the best performances I've seen against the Zombie. I'm not 100% confident on him winning this weekend, but I'm confident enough to put a outright win down. I feel like it'll go to a decision, but I know there's knock out power in both fighters. Alex is the favourite, but the odds are fairly close, I think there's good enough value on Ortega though.

The Diaz fight I'm not actually that interested in. I think Lawler wins, but wouldn't be bothered either way. Definitely won't be including it on my accumulator.

What are we thinking about the main event?

I'd say the reason behind the merit circulation in the Altcoin section being less than the main Bitcoin sections is most merit sources seem to be concentrated on the Bitcoin sections, and there is some sort of stigma towards the Altcoin section, I know there's several users who have that section on ignore, and I'm not really blaming them for doing it. However, I've been saying it for years; the Altcoin section despite having more spam than the Bitcoin sections, still has some very good discussion. It would be brilliant if some merit sources could concentrate on these sections a little bit more.

Although, aside from that I don't think there's anything particularly surprising about the circulation of merit. Generally, the more technical oriented sections tend to encourage more in depth conversations, and therefore the merit flows there a lot more. Altcoin sections are probably considered a lot less technical than the main Bitcoin sections. I must admit that the Development section is one of the best places on the internet, when it comes to discussion about the technical aspects of Bitcoin.

I'm absolutely sure that if anyone wanted to continue reporting, but didn't want to be included in these statistics from time to time they could send theymos a message. It was be relatively easy to omit certain users with a generic placeholder without losing the usefulness of the data, especially considering this isn't something which is done frequently.

I guess it depends on how it's currently implemented. If it's pretty complex to code around at the moment, it might mean that allowing certain staff to manually add badges could potentially cause issues, and that could be unpredictable due to the nature. It's probably better, and would save less headaches if theymos did it themselves or going the automatic route, since they know the way around the code.

 Also, for the record I don't actually have a Youtube channel to subscribe to the Bitcointalk channel, but I'll absolutely be contributing with views .

You're right that if you do fall into the trap of following everyone else you aren't being creative, and just following the crowd. However, there's a crowd for a reason. Individuality, doesn't exactly gain you anything when it comes to marketing, because your not catering for yourself, your catering for the mindless masses that'll consume your content.  I only use mindless because a lot of the people accepting this type of delivery are quite often unaware, and just used to it. After all they've been brought up in a marketing centric world. Though, having said that I've definitely become more accepting of clickbait, and marketing techniques on Youtube albeit I don't watch much content there at all, mainly for the reasons already mentioned by yourself, and because I'm not a big fan of just watching content for the sake of it, when I could be doing something else.

However, I'm only really accepting of clickbait when it's for less serious matters. My point before mainly was that I've become more accepting of it, but I didn't really give a good enough reason to when, and why I'm more accepting of it, which hopefully this reply will somewhat clear that up a little bit. For a short answer; am I a fan of clickbaiting? Absolutely not. Do I tolerate it? Yes, to some degree on certain platforms, and depending on the type of content it's aimed at.

That's my point, that the culture has shifted drastically over the years. For the record, I always find myself complaining about the clickbait nature of Youtube videos, but even more so when it's news clickbaiting. However, I've come to the point of acceptance with Youtube, I understand that's marketing at the end of the day, and if you were not to partake in it, you'd ultimately lose potential viewers. Obviously, I don't have a Youtube channel, however I find it hard to criticise when literally everyone is doing it.

Although, I do absolutely draw the line at news clickbaiting. That to me is unacceptable, and if you are a Youtube channel that is delivering news, then I would feel the same way. I also avoid clickbait titles when it comes to news related articles, and will look for a less clickbait title elsewhere. Though, you ask what about people like us who avoid that type of clickbait? Well, we are what would be called outliers, and statistically speaking if you are looking to reach as big as an audience that you can, then you aren't going to cater for the outliers your going to cater for those that bring in the money.

Clickbait isn't something revolutionary or new at all. It has been around for as long as you can imagine, if you look at old newspapers from back in the 40/50s you'll see clickbait. It's just that the culture now with the internet becoming mainstream, and the nature of the content delivery clickbait has become a expected thing to do, rather than something that once was considered innovative in marketing.

Also, I believe click baiting is absolutely effective, and there is a reason why literally everyone uses it. I often see people believing the news based on its title, instead of the actual content. We're in a weird situation where people haven't got the time to fact check, and they form their opinions based on little snippets of information, and of course I am generalising here, because there is obviously those that put in the research, but if you go to any sort of major news source, you'll see quite evidently they use clickbait to push certain opinions onto its users. I for one don't like most news sources, I used to believe the BBC were at least a little bit better than most news sources, but recently I've caught them using the exact same tactics likely because they've been feeling the pressure to generate more clicks.

My Youtube consumption is extremely low compared to most people. I don't even have a Youtube account where I subscribe to channels I like. I just visit probably 3/4 channels that I watch every so often, I don't even watch all of their videos, just when I feel like it. However, your point here
applies to literally everything these days, you're being manipulated in multiple ways of everything you watch, and see. We are literally in a ad apocalypse, because where ever you look you'll see adverts upon adverts. I can't even watch some UFC these days without adverts appearing over the feed. It's absolutely ridiculous, of course for internet based adverts we have things like Pihole, and ad blockers as extensions, but Youtubers have now resorted to advertising in their video itself, which no ad blocker can effectively remove.  I've literally seen videos where the product they are advertising is longer in duration than the actual content itself.

Professionally done thumbnails are always nice, but I'm actually a fan of content over production. If your content is worthy of watching, but your production lets you down, then I'm not going to stop watching. If your production is amazing, yet the content is dry, or doesn't really bring anything to the table, I'm not going to be that interested. Though, this is where the outliers come in; I'm probably considered an outlier from that perspective, there is plenty of examples out there who are much more successful than me, that have rather poor quality content, but amazing production value.

Putting "Not clickbait" in the title is literally the new type of clickbait. However, I wouldn't be overly critical about clickbaiting. If you want to be somewhat successful on a video content based website or anything in which you see the title before the actual content, then you need to encourage that user to click, and therefore clickbait will always be a thing.

What would you more likely be interested in clicking? "Welsh from Bitcointalk deletes post" or "WELSH THE MODERATOR IS CENSORING USERS". Unfortunately, the way our minds work, and how the culture is shifting, the second option will likely be the most intriguing to 99% of people. Okay, the only thing that's probably off putting is the all caps, but if it wasn't all caps you'd likely be more intrigued than the first one.

Honestly, I wouldn't be too critical if Bitcointalk did clickbait to some degree. Maybe, not to the degree I went to above, but a more subtle way. It's great being as fair as possible, without generating clickbait, but then the chances are success fall. If you don't care overly about success then that's alright, but it's likely that the channel will need to at least generate some sort of independent income to keep it going.

I would have watched the Hafthor vs Hall fight, but I'm not interested in this bout. Hafthor last fight didn't gain much traction, and I'm assuming that this one won't either. The reason the Hall fight was followed as much as it was is because they both have a history, there's rivalry in it, and they aren't the typical fighter build, they are both huge. This fight has none of that, and I'd either expect Hafthor to win through sheer pressure, but not look that good winning or the smaller fighter circling, and picking his shots, and winning the fight through pure agility, and fitness.

Though, I wouldn't entertain the idea of betting on the fight. There's too many factors, and there isn't enough footage on either of them.

Conor's persona went hand in hand with his record, and style of fighting in the octagon. Now that's going, I feel he's lost that identity, and he's trying to chase after it once again, but instead is coming across as a someone who's insulting, and aggressive for little reason. The old Conor was actually quite quick witted, and wasn't as offensive.
I'm not entirely sure about the drugs claim, aside from alcohol of course which has been quite evident in his last attack against the man in the Irish pub. As far I'm aware he should be getting tested regularly even when he isn't fighting, so if you have faith in the drug testing routine he should be drug free.

This is my thinking too. I've wanted a merit button on the patrol page, however that would likely encourage users meriting others on face value. Their post might have some substance, but if it's not related to the thread, then it should probably not be merited at all. I suspect not many users use patrol either, and it's reserved for moderators, and those that enjoy the process of reporting spam.

Exactly what I tried to touch upon above. It takes a certain type of user to complain about trolls publicly, these are usually either; users looking to improve the forum, users that are tired of the trolling, users that feel they are personally being targeted by a troll, and trolls themselves trying to stir up the pot. The legitimate users that complain publicly, probably aren't going to continue to create threads complaining about it. They'll likely just complain once or perhaps twice, and then move on in fear of beating a dead horse. Whatever the reasons there isn't likely going to be a way we can accurately measure the causes, and all we can do is speculate.

Though, it is likely a combination of all the above, rather than it being because of a specific reason. Hence why I said I don't believe the merit system impacted trolls much, spammers definitely, but trolls aren't always spammers.

From my observations (bare in my I don't actually see most reports made) reporting users for trolling is rare. Probably due to the more evident subjectivity of it, and users fearing that they'll get a bad report. I wish that wasn't a factor when users are considering reporting a post, but I suspect it is.

Either we're slowly, but surely eradicating shitposters or the shitposters themselves have taken over, and eradicated the patience of the more constructive users. By the way, that's suppose to be as tongue in cheek as possible, because there's an absolute problem with shitposters still to this day. Whether or not there's been a decrease from before merit was introduced? Hard to say, since a lot of the spam goes on in the Altcoin sections, and with the bump changes that were implemented a while ago, a lot of users don't actually see the vast majority of the spam anymore, giving the illusion that there's less spam going on, than there actually is. In fact, I'm pretty sure we're looking at farm accounts exceeding the thousands, because they bump the same way every day on various threads.  

Could be that or it could be the fact that users are less likely to complain about trolls these days, after potentially mentioning it before. Although, forum activity seems to be less so than before, at least in the main Bitcoin sections, and we've lost a lot of the users that seemed to bring the trolls out in force. I wouldn't say there's a less troll percentage per those that are active, but rather the amount of active users here have decreased.

I don't think the merit system has had much of an effect. At the end of the day, trolls don't usually have a lot of constructive things to say, so the benefits of ranking up for them are probably slim, since I doubt any campaign manager would be willing to accept someone like that into their campaign.

Alex Pereira's ability to kickbox is fantastic, however when you add in the threat of take downs, I don't think he's going to be able to perform to his best ability. What's great about Israel is he knows how to avoid being taken down, at least so some extent. The fight against Jan was a little different, mainly the size difference. Alex on the other hand has proven to be a fantastic, and probably an elite level kickboxer, but as we've seen time, and time again you can't just switch careers into MMA, and expect to perform to the same standard. If Israel, and Alex fought in the UFC I'd expect Israel to mix it up, due to losing previously against him.

However, I don't expect Pereira to be a top five fighter, and I have my doubts about him reaching the top ten.

Yeah, might be worth putting a 3-0 prediction either way, just in case one of the teams decides to ignore FIFA . Nah in all seriousness, I'm hoping that there's progress made, and an announcement that we can field those players. It's a ridiculous decision by FIFA, but should I expect any better from them? Although, if this did go to court, I image that the teams/players would win, since there's unprecedented circumstances with the pandemic, and I would like to think that the Health Board recommendations are far more important than what FIFA try to instill in the competition.

I'm holding off on my prediction review, until there's some sort of confirmation hopefully about this situation.

Proud of Jack Shore, I know I'm a little late on commenting about him, but this week has been absolutely manic. Anyway, I thought he dominated on the stand up, and showed complete control in the grappling situations. I think he has a bright future ahead of him, however I'm trying to not get too excited about his future, not yet anyway.

I'll probably get my fight predictions for the up, and coming event tomorrow.

Makes a lot of sense. Basically can flick the switch whenever he needs or wants to make that money. It's pretty impressive that a young guy like himself can become so successful, be in the limelight of Youtube (which tends to corrupt a lot of them), and still remain level headed enough to focus on his brand, and building the future rather than taking the money now.

His brand is already probably recognised around the world. I mean take me for example, I don't watch a lot of Youtube, but I knew of him instantly, and I also know his emblem. He's probably one of the most effective at planting that brand in your brain.

I guess this is what you get when you combine passion for a forum, various different personalities, and the ways of earning money from something you're passionate about. Unfortunately, this has led to a culture that is quite hostile to newbies, whether it's intentional or simply because users have become fed up with the amount of abusers, and account farmers on the forum, the result is the same; it scares away legitimate users.

At least, taking away from your other remarks, scares away a particular demographic; i.e usually of the older generation. Since, it appears that the internet in general is a toxic breeding ground, and when you sprinkle in a little bit of anonymity people usually say, and act more maliciously than they would in person. Social media has seemed to exaggerate this, and is common among the younger generations.

I've talked to it before, I like to give the benefit of the doubt whenever possible, but that's quite  difficult at times, and while I don't completely blame those for automatically being suspicious of new users due to the nature of the forum, and well the nature of people themselves. I do wish we were a little more welcoming overall.  

I touched upon this indirectly above, but I would like to put emphasis on this; I don't think this is a particularly toxic place when you compare it to other social medias, and other discussion forums, but rather it's due to the shift in culture, and the factor of being pseudonymous.