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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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Polian interview with Football Outsiders

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  • Polian interview with Football Outsiders

    Some really cool stuff.
    http://www.footballoutsiders.com/200...amblings/6317/

    FO Interview: Bill Polian

    6/3/2008
    by Aaron Schatz


    I recently had a chance to meet Indianapolis general manager Bill Polian at the second annual MIT Sloan Sports Business Conference, and he agreed to do an e-mail interview with Football Outsiders. We wanted to ask him about not just the Colts, but also his earlier experiences, from the Chicago Blitz to the Carolina Panthers. Thanks to Ned Macey for helping come up with the questions. The answers are short, but definitely interesting.

    FO: What did you learn from your short stays in the USFL (Chicago) and CFL (Winnipeg) in 1983-84?
    Bill Polian: A great deal. I did virtually every job an executive had to do, from stadium ops to team travel to personnel and signing of players. It prepared me more to be a G.M. than any other experience I have had.

    FO: Your Buffalo and Indianapolis teams are known primarily as offensive powerhouses, but Carolina was built primarily around defense. Did you focus on defense specifically because being an expansion team required a different strategy, or did it just shake out that way because those were the best players available at the time?
    Bill Polian: We felt the fastest way to win was via defense. The running game. A sound kicking game. And the development of a young quarterback.




    FO: Why did Carolina choose to build a veteran team that could contend immediately, but only for a short period, rather than building slowly with younger talent like Jacksonville, Houston, and Cleveland?
    Bill Polian: We had to sell Personal Seat Licenses in the new Carolina stadium and therefore had to win right away.
    FO: By any objective measure, the 2005 and 2007 Colts were better in the regular season than the 2006 Colts. Why do you think the 2006 team was able to win the Super Bowl? Is it just a matter of getting to the postseason every year with a quality team and then playing a good month of football, or is there something special that a team needs for postseason success?

    Bill Polian: A good question. I think the health of our defense in 2006 was a major factor as opposed to 2005 and 2007. You have to be as healthy as you can be in the playoffs.
    FO: Tony Dungy was hired in 2002 in large part to develop a competent defense to go with a dominant offense. To that point, you had drafted a number of larger defenders not prototypical for the “Tampa-2.” How did you go about changing your evaluation style of draft prospects to fit a different system, or is the difference in the type of player needed overstated?

    Bill Polian: The difference in players needed is not overstated. We made the change by changing the parameters of our scouting system. It was not an easy task.
    FO: Your defense ranked third in our DVOA metrics this season. More than half of the starters were drafted after the fourth round or not at all. What is the key to getting such productivity out of lesser prospects? What attributes are you most looking for with these late-round and rookie free agent pick-ups? What did you see in Ed Johnson that everyone else missed?

    Bill Polian: See the previous answer. We know what criteria are important to succeed in our defense and look for them in every round of the draft. In Ed’s case we saw athletic ability and heard from Coach Paterno that he had “grown up and was ready to become a contributor.”

    FO: Since Dungy, a Minnesota grad, was hired, almost half of your Day 1 picks have been on Big Ten players. Is that a coincidence, or do you have a better feel for people who play college football in the Midwest? Along those lines, how are your college scouts assigned, by region, by conference, or something else?
    Bill Polian: Our college scouts are assigned by region. I go all over the country as do our other scouting supervisors. I think the rough tough style of play in the Big Ten may produce players more suited to our style. In the end it’s more coincidence that anything else.
    FO: Both starting guards are free agents this year. How important is maintaining continuity along the offensive line, and assuming it is important, is it more important that the players are used to playing with each other or that they are used to playing in your system? Who do you expect to take over for Jake Scott now that he signed in Tennessee?

    Bill Polian: We think Charlie Johnson can step in for Jake Scott. We of course, kept Ryan Lilja. It is more important for the players to understand and execute the system than to have familiarity with one another. For example, Charlie Johnson as a rookie, played three quarters of the Super Bowl when Ryan Diem was injured. Our backs didn’t even notice that there had been a change.

    FO: In many of your playoff losses, including 2007, your team has struggled to run the ball. In 2006, you split carries during the season between Addai and Rhodes and were able to run the ball extremely well in the playoffs. Is this a coincidence, or do you think that first Edgerrin James and now Addai were worn down by the time the playoffs start?
    Bill Polian: I definitely think Edgerrin was worn down in 2004 and 2005. No question about it. Since we went to the two back system in 2006 with Dominic Rhodes and 2007 with Kenton Keith I think we have been more effective.

    FO: If you had drafted second in 1998, would you have drafted Ryan Leaf?
    Bill Polian: Good question. I can’t say for certain. I surely would have looked hard for an impact defensive player as opposed to simply settling for a quarterback other than Peyton.

    FO: What player improved the most, on any of your teams, compared to how good he was when you first acquired him?
    Bill Polian: On our team here in Indianapolis, I would say cornerback Kelvin Hayden. On our team in Carolina, I would say running back Anthony Johnson and wide receiver Mushin Muhammad. On our team in Buffalo, I would say future Hall of Famer Andre Reed.

    FO: If Kerry Collins had been surrounded by Marvin Harrison, Edgerrin James, and Reggie Wayne, would he have been a perennial Pro Bowler and borderline Hall of Famer?
    Bill Polian: I can’t speak to Pro Bowls or Hall of Fame but I have no doubt that with our offensive line and the skill group you mentioned including Dallas Clark at tight end, Kerry Collins would be a big winner. We would be a much different style offense and football team, but we would win.

    FO: Other than Super Bowl XLI and the other games during the 2006 playoffs, what is the most satisfying wins any of your teams has had?
    Bill Polian: In Carolina it would be our win in San Francisco against the 49ers in December 1996 which clinched a Division Championship for us and vaulted us into contender status in the NFL in our second year of existence.
    In Buffalo it would be the “The Greatest Comeback Ever” in January 1993, against the Houston Oilers in the AFC playoffs, when we came from 35 points down in the second half to win in overtime.


    We thank Mr. Polian’s assistant Sue Kelly for making this interview possible.
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