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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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Yeesh... Mike Wells' latest...

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  • #1

    Yeesh... Mike Wells' latest...

    http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dl...plate=printart

    Backup starts to excel
    Johnson shows he's not afraid to take the big shots for Pacers in his new role.

    By Mike Wells
    mike.wells@indystar.com
    April 27, 2005

    Several years ago, Indiana Pacers guard Anthony Johnson would not have imagined taking the kind of high-pressure shots he attempted late Monday night in a critical playoff game at Boston.

    Of course, he likely would not have been on the court for the deciding moments of a postseason game in previous seasons. Even if he had drawn late-game duty, Johnson said he would not have had enough confidence to pull the trigger after the way he shot for three quarters against the Celtics in Game 2.

    Johnson missed eight of his first nine shots from the field Monday. But with the Pacers on the brink of falling behind 2-0 in their best-of-seven series, he was ready to make the plays. Pacers coach Rick Carlisle drew up a couple of plays that would allow Johnson to either pull up for a short jumper or take the ball to the basket.

    Johnson hit a 7-foot turnaround with about two minutes left in the game to tie the score, completing the Pacers' comeback from a seven-point fourth-quarter deficit.

    Then, with the logical options being Jermaine O'Neal, Stephen Jackson and Reggie Miller, Johnson produced the game-winning layup with 1:09 remaining in an 82-79 victory.

    "I think early in my career, I probably wouldn't have (taken the shots)," Johnson said. "Once you find yourself out of the league and you watch games on TV, you just know you have to be confident and aggressive. No matter how bad you're shooting and things aren't going your way, you still have to believe in yourself because if you don't, no one else will.

    "I've been on a lot of teams where a lot of guys make a lot of money that run from the ball. I don't understand that. I always promised myself that when I do get the opportunity to play big minutes and play down the stretch of the game, I was going to show I'm an NBA player."

    Johnson finished just 4-of-14 from the field, his worst shooting performance in two weeks. But what will be remembered are those two big shots that helped the Pacers tie the series 1-1.

    "A.J. is a big reason why we're here," Jackson said. "We're still going to go to him. We have confidence in him."

    As good as it might have felt for Johnson, he knows what critics say about him being just an average backup NBA point guard. Johnson, who says he browses newspaper articles on the Internet, has read what has been written about him and seen what's appeared on TV.

    "I know I'm a backup point guard," he said. "I know if Jamaal (Tinsley) was here, he'd be the starter and I'd be the backup. There's no discrepancy on what I am.

    "But at the same time, I have to step up and be the starter. You can't have the mind-set of being a backup player when you're playing with the first unit, and you have to be aggressive. Who cares what they say? I have to run the ballclub."

    Johnson bounced back from what he thought was a poor performance in Game 1 to have seven assists, seven rebounds, three steals and a block to go with his nine points in 37 minutes in Game 2. It's Johnson's job for the rest of the series to make sure the Pacers don't try to run with the Celtics.

    "We knew he was going to have to play bigger minutes," coach Rick Carlisle said. "We changed our rotation to space his rests out at certain points during the game."

    Tinsley said this past weekend he hopes to play before the series concludes.

    Until then, Johnson will log a lot of minutes. Reserve Eddie Gill, the only other healthy point guard, didn't play in Game 2, leaving shooting guard Fred Jones to spell Johnson at the position.

    With Tinsley limited to three games since Jan. 31, Johnson averaged 6.1 assists in 31.6 minutes a game in 39 regular-season games, which included 33 starts. His assists per game were up by nearly four from his first 25 appearances during the regular season.

    Johnson has played in 63 career playoff games, including two NBA Finals appearances with the Nets, but he didn't make his first postseason start until Saturday.

    "Of course I'm ready to do that," Johnson said about increasing his minutes. "This is what you live for. I've been in the league several years and I've been in the playoffs, but I've never had the opportunity to really play crunch-time minutes and really big minutes.

    "This is an opportunity I'm relishing and I have to step up to the challenge. Not only for my individual self, but for my team."
    This space for rent.
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  • #2
    Re: Yeesh... Mike Wells' latest...

    Does Mike even WATCH the Pacers? We know he watches other teams because he can't stop writing about their players. But what the heck is this?

    Backup starts to excel - Johnson shows he's not afraid to take the big shots for Pacers in his new role.

    New role? What about the last 30 games of the season? And how exactly did this game show that AJ is "starting to excel?" He was definitely solid for Game 2 (and great in the 4th quarter), but nowhere near the standard he set earlier in the season. Why didn't this article come out when he tossing out 20 point or 12-assist games? I wasn't against the Star "going a different direction" from Montieth, but this isn't one I'd have chosen.

    I did like this, though. I saw it in the postgame quotes a couple nights ago, but we didn't talk about it much.
    "I know I'm a backup point guard," he said. "I know if Jamaal (Tinsley) was here, he'd be the starter and I'd be the backup. There's no discrepancy on what I am.

    "But at the same time, I have to step up and be the starter. You can't have the mind-set of being a backup player when you're playing with the first unit, and you have to be aggressive. Who cares what they say? I have to run the ballclub."
    This is where Jay and I are very similar... we like guys that embrace their roles. That statement does it for me... I'm happy with Walsh's decision to give AJ a long-term contract. I complained about it when it happened, but I'm happy now.
    This space for rent.

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