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The Rules of Pacers Digest

Hello everyone,

Whether your are a long standing forum member or whether you have just registered today, it's a good idea to read and review the rules below so that you have a very good idea of what to expect when you come to Pacers Digest.

A quick note to new members: Your posts will not immediately show up when you make them. An administrator has to approve at least your first post before the forum software will later upgrade your account to the status of a fully-registered member. This usually happens within a couple of hours or so after your post(s) is/are approved, so you may need to be a little patient at first.

Why do we do this? So that it's more difficult for spammers (be they human or robot) to post, and so users who are banned cannot immediately re-register and start dousing people with verbal flames.

Below are the rules of Pacers Digest. After you have read them, you will have a very good sense of where we are coming from, what we expect, what we don't want to see, and how we react to things.

Rule #1

Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:

"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"

"People with intelligence will agree with me when I say that __________"

"Only stupid people think / believe / do ___________"

"I can't wait to hear something from PosterX when he/she sees that **insert a given incident or current event that will have probably upset or disappointed PosterX here**"

"He/she is just delusional"

"This thread is stupid / worthless / embarrassing"

"I'm going to take a moment to point and / laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*"

"Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good? "

In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.

We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.

Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.

That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.

A slip up every once and a while is pretty normal, but, again, when it becomes repetitive or excessive, something will be done. Something occasional is probably going to be let go (within reason), but when it starts to become habitual or otherwise a pattern, odds are very good that we will step in.

There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.

Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.

In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.

Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.

If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!

All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.

Rule #2

If the actions of an administrator inspire you to make a comment, criticism, or express a concern about it, there is a wrong place and a couple of right places to do so.

The wrong place is to do so in the original thread in which the administrator took action. For example, if a post gets an infraction, or a post gets deleted, or a comment within a larger post gets clipped out, in a thread discussing Paul George, the wrong thing to do is to distract from the discussion of Paul George by adding your off topic thoughts on what the administrator did.

The right places to do so are:

A) Start a thread about the specific incident you want to talk about on the Feedback board. This way you are able to express yourself in an area that doesn't throw another thread off topic, and this way others can add their two cents as well if they wish, and additionally if there's something that needs to be said by the administrators, that is where they will respond to it.

B) Send a private message to the administrators, and they can respond to you that way.

If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.

Rule #3

If a poster is bothering you, and an administrator has not or will not deal with that poster to the extent that you would prefer, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, one that has recently been upgraded and is now better than ever: The ability to ignore a user.

When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:

A) Any post they make will be completely invisible as you scroll through a thread.

B) The new addition to this feature: If someone QUOTES a user you are ignoring, you do not have to read who it was, or what that poster said, unless you go out of your way to click on a link to find out who it is and what they said.

To utilize this feature, from any page on Pacers Digest, scroll to the top of the page, look to the top right where it says 'Settings' and click that. From the settings page, look to the left side of the page where it says 'My Settings', and look down from there until you see 'Edit Ignore List' and click that. From here, it will say 'Add a Member to Your List...' Beneath that, click in the text box to the right of 'User Name', type in or copy & paste the username of the poster you are ignoring, and once their name is in the box, look over to the far right and click the 'Okay' button. All done!

Rule #4

Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.

Rule #5

When you share or paste content or articles from another website, you must include the URL/link back to where you found it, who wrote it, and what website it's from. Said content will be removed if this doesn't happen.

An example:

If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:

http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star

Rule #6

We cannot tolerate illegal videos on Pacers Digest. This means do not share any links to them, do not mention any websites that host them or link to them, do not describe how to find them in any way, and do not ask about them. Posts doing anything of the sort will be removed, the offenders will be contacted privately, and if the problem becomes habitual, you will be suspended, and if it still persists, you will probably be banned.

The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.

Rule #7

Provocative statements in a signature, or as an avatar, or as the 'tagline' beneath a poster's username (where it says 'Member' or 'Administrator' by default, if it is not altered) are an unwanted distraction that will more than likely be removed on sight. There can be shades of gray to this, but in general this could be something political or religious that is likely going to provoke or upset people, or otherwise something that is mean-spirited at the expense of a poster, a group of people, or a population.

It may or may not go without saying, but this goes for threads and posts as well, particularly when it's not made on the off-topic board (Market Square).

We do make exceptions if we feel the content is both innocuous and unlikely to cause social problems on the forum (such as wishing someone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter), and we also also make exceptions if such topics come up with regards to a sports figure (such as the Lance Stephenson situation bringing up discussions of domestic abuse and the law, or when Jason Collins came out as gay and how that lead to some discussion about gay rights).

However, once the discussion seems to be more/mostly about the political issues instead of the sports figure or his specific situation, the thread is usually closed.

Rule #8

We prefer self-restraint and/or modesty when making jokes or off topic comments in a sports discussion thread. They can be fun, but sometimes they derail or distract from a topic, and we don't want to see that happen. If we feel it is a problem, we will either delete or move those posts from the thread.

Rule #9

Generally speaking, we try to be a "PG-13" rated board, and we don't want to see sexual content or similarly suggestive content. Vulgarity is a more muddled issue, though again we prefer things to lean more towards "PG-13" than "R". If we feel things have gone too far, we will step in.

Rule #10

We like small signatures, not big signatures. The bigger the signature, the more likely it is an annoying or distracting signature.

Rule #11

Do not advertise anything without talking about it with the administrators first. This includes advertising with your signature, with your avatar, through private messaging, and/or by making a thread or post.
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These must happen?

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  • These must happen?

    Hollinger has some thing up regarding "must happen" trades. I don't know the restrictions on this type of thing, but if anyone could post the gist it would be awesome.

    http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insid...PERDiem-100108

    Muchos Gracias
    Roy Hibbert.... It's the POWER!!!

  • #2
    Re: These must happen?

    dont have espn insider
    care to tell us more?
    Peck is basically omniscient when it comes to understanding how the minds of Herb Simon and Kevin Pritchard work. I was a fool to ever question him and now feel deep shame for not understanding that this team believes in continuity above talent.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: These must happen?

      Originally posted by HanSolo View Post
      dont have espn insider
      care to tell us more?
      He doesn't know either.... he's hoping somebody with Insider will spill the beans.
      This space for rent.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: These must happen?

        Teams that need to make a deal
        PER Diem: Jan. 8, 2010
        Comment Email Print Share
        By John Hollinger
        ESPN.com
        Archive


        Ned Dishman/NBAE/Getty Images
        With little shot at the playoffs, the Wiz may want to trade both Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler.
        We're still more than a month away from the trade deadline, but as Oklahoma City showed with its recent heist of Eric Maynor from Utah, trading season is already underway.

        As we head toward the Feb. 18 deadline, we'll hear lots of names and teams come up. Virtually every club in the league has some interest, whether as a buyer or a seller, in reshaping their roster.

        For that reason, lots of potential trades could happen. Lots and lots and lots of them. But today, I'm going to focus on a much smaller subset of those -- the trades that have to happen.

        NBA Trade Machine
        Put on your GM hat and make your own trades and deals.
        Trade Machine

        In each case, a team finds itself over the luxury-tax line and heading nowhere, providing a mammoth incentive to cut money between now and Feb. 18 to get under the threshold. The Wizards, of course, are the most prominent example, thanks to the Gilbert Arenas saga and their 11-22 record. But the Hornets, Jazz and Heat all find themselves over the tax line but without any realistic hope of contending. As a result, they're not just hoping to make a deal -- they need to.

        Thus, I expect most of the action to happen around those four teams on deadline day. Other swaps can and probably will happen, but there's much less urgency to them. These are the four situations I'll be watching most closely over the next month, as they'll likely be the epicenter of any trade discussions:


        Washington Wizards, $8.75 million over the luxury tax

        The Wizards are going nowhere fast, so it seems preposterous to think they'll fork out nearly $9 million in tax and forego another $4 million or so in distributions from the league just to win 28 games instead of 25 (presuming they'll be unsuccessful in voiding Arenas' contract before the trade deadline).
        Here's where it gets tricky -- since Oklahoma City swallowed up Matt Harpring's deal in the Maynor trade, there's nobody left with the cap space to take on a big contract. The most-discussed deal for Washington would be to send Antawn Jamison to Cleveland for Zydrunas Ilgauskas' expiring contract, since that gets Washington off the hook for the last three years of Jamison's deal; I have no doubt Washington could also be persuaded to waive Ilgauskas to allow Cleveland to re-sign him.
        The problem is that such a deal does nothing for the Wizards' present tax situation. As a result, there's less urgency for such a trade than there is for other possibilities. In fact, the Wizards' best chances at deals may not involve any of their big three of Jamison, Arenas and Caron Butler.
        For instance, consider this deal: Orlando uses its massive trade exception from the Hedo Turkoglu trade, adding Mike Miller, Dominic McGuire and DeShawn Stevenson (with the exception) from Washington, while sending J.J. Redick to Washington and Mickael Pietrus to Memphis. The trade would shore up the Magic's shooting and also clean up next year's balance sheet a bit.
        If Orlando doesn't like that one, several potential variants work. For instance, Wizards center Brendan Haywood could go to the Magic while Redick stays in Orlando ... or the Magic could add Haywood, send Redick and Anthony Johnson to Memphis and hang on to Pietrus ... or the Magic could acquire Butler instead of Miller ... or the Magic could obtain Jamison instead of Miller and send either Brandon Bass or Marcin Gortat (with his consent, which presumably he'd give) back to Washington.
        In any case, a three-way deal with Orlando and Memphis is the obvious escape hatch for the Wizards' predicament. But Memphis (or Sacramento) must be involved, since all the avenues above require using nearly all of the Grizzlies' or Kings' $4.2 million in remaining cap space. The best arrangement I come up with has Washington sending Randy Foye and Javaris Crittenton to Memphis and the Grizzlies sending Hamed Haddadi and Steven Hunter to Washington to complete the deal.
        At the end, the Wizards will have wiped away $9 million in tax obligations, even before we get into any of the particulars with Arenas.

        New Orleans Hornets, $3.33 million over

        The Hornets may make the playoffs despite their slow start, but that doesn't change their terrible economics. The Hornets aren't making much bank and are unlikely to sign off on what amounts to $10 million in expenses ($3 million in salary, $3 million in luxury tax, $4 million in foregone distributions) just to give themselves a 50-50 chance of making the playoffs as L.A.'s Round 1 punching bag.
        New Orleans has added incentive because the Hornets already are over next year's projected luxury-tax line by several million dollars. (Orlando, the Lakers, Denver and Dallas are the only other four teams that are certain to be over, though several other clubs dance perilously close to the line.) Because of this, some wonder if the Hornets will be forced to deal David West, but I doubt it will come to that.
        As luck would have it, the Sacramento Kings are $4.15 million under the cap at the moment, making them an obvious trade partner. The two sides could set some kind of record for dead money included in a deal, actually, if the Kings swapped Kenny Thomas and Andres Nocioni to the Hornets for Darius Songaila, James Posey, Morris Peterson and Hilton Armstrong.
        Such a deal would likely cost the Hornets cash and a first-rounder, too, since the Kings would be eating into their potential 2010 cap space. In fact, the Kings might turn the screws and demand that promising point guard Darren Collison be part of the swap. Nonetheless, that might be worth it for New Orleans since it would get them under next year's tax as well as this year's -- much as it made sense for Utah to deal Maynor recently.
        Other variations on this deal also work. For instance, replace Nocioni with Beno Udrih and Armstrong with Devin Brown and the Hornets save just as much this year, albeit less next year. Subtracting Thomas and Posey from the deal also works. In all of these scenarios, incidentally, the four-for-two or three-for-one nature of the deal would require Sacramento to cut Sean May. But I presume they'd get over it quickly.
        The point is that the Hornets have an obvious incentive to rent the Kings' cap space, and the Kings could use some of what the Hornets have to offer (cash, a pick, potential relief from the 2011-12 money owed to either Nocioni or Udrih). It cuts into Sacramento's cap room for next summer by about $3 million (depending on the exact parameters), but considering that draft picks normally cost $3 million, they'd get cash and a couple of useful players out of it. And since they weren't going to be in the LeBron sweepstakes anyway, it works out nicely on their end, too.

        Utah Jazz, $4.86 million over

        The trade of Harpring and Maynor was only the first salvo for the Jazz, who still have work to do to pull themselves under the luxury-tax threshold. As with their fellow small-market club in New Orleans, it simply isn't worth it for the Jazz to rack up such a tremendous expense just to be a fringe playoff team.
        The Jazz have an obvious gem to dangle before interested parties in the form of Carlos Boozer, who has an expiring contract worth $12 million and has performed at an All-Star level through the first half of the season. Utah would likely need to package him with Kyle Korver, who has an expiring deal of his own worth $5.1 million.
        One such scenario, for instance, would be if the Jazz sent Boozer to Charlotte, a team that's suddenly angling for a playoff spot and in need of some help at power forward given Boris Diaw's disappointing output. The potential haul from such a deal is likely disappointing from Utah's perspective, as they could get Diaw, Gerald Henderson and a lottery-protected first-round pick. But that's about all they can expect considering Boozer will be a three-month rental for whoever acquires him.
        If they made it a three-way deal by sending Korver to the Clippers, Ricky Davis to the Bobcats (using the trade exception from the Raja Bell deal) and Mardy Collins to Utah, it would get Utah under the tax. The Clips would probably sign off on such a scenario only if Korver shows he's returned to health, so there are several hurdles here. But it strikes me as the most likely alternative as the Jazz aim to hit their financial goals, because the other potential acquirers would either put themselves deeper into the tax or have no strong need for a scoring power forward.

        Miami Heat, $2.81 million over

        Miami's decision to guarantee Carlos Arroyo's contract for the rest of the season surprised me because it made it harder for the Heat to get under the tax line come February. But with Miami's American Airlines Arena drawing poorly and another first-round playoff exit seeming highly likely, they're another team that I expect to cut money in the next month. It's not quite the slam-dunk case that the first three examples offer, but the dollar amount is small enough that Miami could accomplish the savings without much pain.
        The simple, one-step plan for doing this is called "trading Dorell Wright." If there is one player I can almost guarantee will be changing uniforms in the next month, it's Wright -- the financial incentives are too good not to.
        The Heat can offer anyone the $951,066 he'll have left on his contract on trade-deadline day to take Wright off their hands, likely adding a sweetener for the trouble (for instance, either more cash or one of the two second-round picks they got from the Hornets on draft day last year). Any number of teams could pull off such a deal, with the prime suspects being the Clippers (a $3.3 million trade exception from the Zach Randolph deal and an owner who loves to make a buck) and the Grizzlies.
        "A man with no belly has no appetite for life."

        - Salman Rushdie

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: These must happen?

          If you want to know why I am so in favor of doing a SalaryDump in the next month before the 2009-2010 Trade Deadlin....even if it's for Foster while getting back nothing of value except for an Expiring contract......look at the Wizard's and Hornet's current SalaryCap situation and you'll understand why. Next Season, I do not want to be in the situation where we have to include sweetner just to get under the Luxury Tax in 2010-2011.
          Last edited by CableKC; 01-08-2010, 07:52 PM.
          Ash from Army of Darkness: Good...Bad...I'm the guy with the gun.

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