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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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The All-Expectations Team

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  • #1

    The All-Expectations Team

    http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=17363


    Training camp for most teams starts in a week, and that means after one of the most raucous summers of all time we finally will get a chance to see all that money and movement put to work.

    The thing about spent money and traded players is that fans expect immediate dividends, even if that isn't always reasonable. Still, the following players are the ones with the largest expectations heaped upon them as we head into the new season.

    As criteria for this list we looked at players who, for some reason or another, will feel a new, bigger pressure from fans this season that they haven't previously had to experience. Also, the guys on this list are players who have an outside chance at falling short of those expectations. So by the first criteria, we aren't putting someone like Kobe Bryant on the list, and by the second criteria we aren't including someone like John Wall.

    I've also excluded anyone currently on the Miami HEAT because I think we can all agree that they are themselves the "All-Expectations Team." Moving beyond, however, this is what we're looking at:

    Darren Collison, Indiana Pacers – The day Indiana shipped out Troy Murphy and returned James Posey and Darren Collison, Pacers fans were practically screaming the word "playoffs" from their rooftops. While that may be a little bit unreasonable an expectation to have for a young team without a legit starting power forward, it's an expectation all the same, and it's one that has almost everything to do with the acquisition of Collison. Why are people so excited? Because when Chris Paul was out in New Orleans last year Collison put up some ridiculous numbers, both in the scoring and assist columns, leading almost everyone to believe he deserved to be running a team somewhere. The Pacers, in dire need of a franchise point guard, made that happen but now Collison has to show that his flashes of brilliance last season weren't flashes in the pan. A lot of really hungry Indiana basketball fans are waiting for him to be their team's savior and saving the Pacers is just about as big a job as you could give so young a player.

    Derrick Rose, Chicago Bulls – Not only does the city of Chicago expect the Bulls to be a very good team this year, but the rest of the country and the world would tend to agree that there are quite a few games to be won in 2010-2011. If all those new players and that new coach can't come together quickly enough for Chicago to see immediate success, however, it's going to fall on somebody's shoulders to get it together and find a way to start winning those games. The expectation for Derrick Rose is that he become that guy. He showed at times last year that he was capable of this, but his Team USA struggles have some wondering if he'll make the third-year jump so many superstars make in their careers. It's right about now that All-Stars turn into mega-stars if they're going to do it. According to most, Rose is ready to make that jump. The question is whether or not he's got it in him to do so.

    Amar'e Stoudemire, New York Knicks – The Knicks haven't made the playoffs in almost a decade, and Stoudemire is the man they're paying $100 million to single-handedly change that. Nowhere in the country is there more media scrutiny than in New York, and since Stoudemire is the new poster boy of the franchise you can guess who is going to take the brunt of the blame if things don't go well out that way this season. Knicks fans are hungry for a return to success, and they're going to expect that whether or not the team ends up with Carmelo Anthony and/or Chris Paul in the coming seasons. Those expectations fall squarely on the shoulders of Amar'e Stoudemire, who gets to lead a team for the first time in his career.

    Brendan Haywood, Dallas Mavericks – When the Mavericks made the mid-season trade last season to bring in Caron Butler from the Washington Wizards they couldn't have known what an asset Brendan Haywood would be, but his stellar play down the stretch for the red-hot Mavs was enough for him to receive a huge extension from Mark Cuban that will pay him $55 million over six years. Not only that, but even after acquiring gold medal-winning center Tyson Chandler over the summer, the Mavs seem committed to starting Haywood—a huge nod to the expectations they have for him as a center in the prime of his career. If anyone is going to knock off the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference this summer Dallas would be the team to do it, and they believe Haywood is going to have a huge hand in what they accomplish this year. After getting all those wheelbarrows full of cash, he'd better.

    Trevor Ariza, New Orleans Hornets – When Trevor Ariza broke out as an L.A. Laker in early 2009, he was able to turn potential into a lucrative deal with the Houston Rockets. The problem in Houston, however, was that they already had a really good small forward in Shane Battier, causing Ariza to take a step back in his first season with the Rockets. Now, however, he's going to be given carte blanche in the Big Easy with perhaps the best point guard in the game of basketball. Any expectation there has ever been on Ariza to be a primetime player will come to fruition in New Orleans or not at all. Also, that was a move meant to placate Chris Paul, meaning the organization hopes a big year from Ariza can help convince CP3 that he's got enough talent around him to make it worth staying where he is instead of bolting for a new team. That's quite a bit of pressure on Ariza, is it not?

    DeMar DeRozan, Toronto Raptors – The Raptors have great, passionate fans that have talked themselves into a relatively positive life after Chris Bosh. Somebody on that team is going to have to emerge as a star, and while the closest thing to that at present might be Andrea Bargnani, the general public is more interested in second-year swingman DeMar DeRozan. One of the more athletic players in the league, this young shooting guard prospect has a long way to go before he starts hearing his name whispered in the same breath as "All-Star," but that doesn't mean the expectations aren't there for him to do exactly that. The city of Toronto would love to see their basketball team succeed without the assistance of Chris Bosh, and to do that they need a star. DeRozan is the best candidate for that, so hopefully he's up to the task of getting himself there.

    Brandon Jennings, Milwaukee Bucks – There's real talk that the Milwaukee Bucks could win the Central Division this season, and the crazy thing is that the talk isn't crazy. Did that make sense? To simplify, the league has learned to "Fear the Deer" and Rookie of the Year runner-up point guard Brandon Jennings is the main reason why. However, while Jennings started off the season with a bang (remember that 55-point outburst in his first month of play?), he sort of leveled off down the stretch. People remember the killer Jennings, though, and that's the one they're expecting to see all season this year - only a year older, wiser, and better.
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  • #2
    Re: The All-Expectations Team

    I like me some Darren Collison.

    Comment

    • #3
      Re: The All-Expectations Team

      Collison is giving the Pacers more positive "media" attention than anyone on the entire team has in the last 4-5 years.

      That's saying a lot seeing that Granger was an all-star.

      I'm really hoping he's the PG we've all been waiting for!

      Comment

      • #4
        Re: The All-Expectations Team

        I like Darren, but I hope people are reasonable with their expectations.

        The kid is going from a system that was completely revolved around the PG, to Jimmy's system. Which involves decision making, although really an inability to directly create for teammates well. (Obviously drive and dish is always there, but nothing really..creative) Jimmy's system is loose and free which makes things more difficult for the PG.

        He's also going from having a mentor in Chris Paul to a peer in AJ - who could, at the most, help him out with the plays that don't really exist. And TJ. Yea..I can see it now. ("But aren't you supposed to have an idea of what you're going to do before you drive deep into the paint?") He doesn't really have anyone to take him under his wings here. AJ at least had Watson and to an extent Diener, to help him out.

        So essentially, be reasonable. He may not be good in this offense (which I have that feeling, personally) It may take him a while to understand it. And when he does, he may not rack up the stats we're hoping because this offense isn't built for that.

        And if any of that happens, it doesn't mean Collison was a bad pickup, or isn't the future starter..it just means that he needs time to adjust or he needs to be in a new system (which I'm guessing, Jim won't be here too long anyway)
        Last edited by Sookie; 09-20-2010, 10:25 PM.

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        • #5
          Re: The All-Expectations Team

          Originally posted by Sookie View Post
          The kid is going from a system that was completely revolved around the PG, to Jimmy's system.
          Well, we've never seen whatever 'system' it is operated with a decent PG. Maybe JOB will adapt a little to his skills.

          And maybe the cow did indeed jump over the moon, but I digress ...................

          Comment

          • #6
            Re: The All-Expectations Team

            I don't need him to be a star.
            or a savior.
            just another piece of the puzzle.

            Comment

            • #7
              Re: The All-Expectations Team

              A big piece of the puzzle.

              Comment

              • #8
                Re: The All-Expectations Team

                Seems bigger to US because it's a piece we've needed for so long.
                But in terms of TEAM, we've got 4 other good players around him.
                A star would fantastic, but just another Danny or Roy type impact would be just fine.
                We don't "need" 20 pts and 10 assists out of him to have a good team.
                (be ok though)

                Comment

                • #9
                  Re: The All-Expectations Team

                  I would be ecstatic with 15 and 8.
                  "Your course, your path, is not going to be like mine," West says. "Everybody is not called to be a multimillionaire. Everybody's not called to be the president. Whatever your best work is, you do it. Do it well. … You cease your own greatness when you aspire to be someone else."

                  Comment

                  • #10
                    Re: The All-Expectations Team

                    Originally posted by pacergod2 View Post
                    I would be ecstatic with 15 and 8.
                    14, 7, and 4 would be fine with me. That's how bad the PGs have been for the Pacers. Anything above that is good gravy.

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