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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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12/21/2012

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  • #16
    Re: 12/21/2012

    Sorry to hear that.

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    • #17
      Re: 12/21/2012

      Originally posted by Hicks View Post
      So how long was the cycle that's ending in 2012? Thousands of years? A multi-thousand year cycle?
      See post below.
      Last edited by Trader Joe; 12-22-2008, 04:40 PM.


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      • #18
        Re: 12/21/2012

        Isn't there supposed to be some sort of incredibly rare alignment of planets and such (or maybe not, but I don't know what exactly is lining up) and it'll cause some sort of catastrophe on Earth?

        My succinct, easy to interpret question aside, I am intrigued by 12/21/12...

        Comment


        • #19
          Re: 12/21/2012

          I need to do some more research, but I'm also pretty sure this isn't the first time the Mayan calendar predicted the world would "end".

          Here ya go,

          "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle," says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. in Crystal River, Florida. To render December 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is "a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in." [13]
          Since Calendar Round dates can only distinguish in 18,980 days, equivalent to around 52 solar years, the cycle repeats roughly once each lifetime, and thus, a more refined method of dating was needed if history was to be recorded accurately. To measure dates, therefore, over periods longer than 52 years, Mesoamericans devised the Long Count calendar.
          The Maya name for a day was k'in. Twenty of these k'ins are known as a winal or uinal. Eighteen winals make one tun. Twenty tuns are known as a k'atun. Twenty k'atuns make a b'ak'tun.
          The Long Count calendar identifies a date by counting the number of days from August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar or September 6 in the Julian calendar. But instead of using a base-10 (decimal) scheme like Western numbering, the Long Count days were tallied in a modified base-20 scheme. Thus 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25, and 0.0.0.2.0 is equal to 40. As the winal unit resets after only counting to 18, the Long Count consistently uses base-20 only if the tun is considered the primary unit of measurement, not the k'in; with the k'in and winal units being the number of days in the tun. The Long Count 0.0.1.0.0 represents 360 days, rather than the 400 in a purely base-20 (vigesimal) count.
          Table of Long Count units
          Days Long Count period Long Count period Approx solar years
          1 = 1 K'in

          20 = 20 K'in = 1 Winal 1/18th
          360 = 18 Winal = 1 Tun 1
          7,200 = 20 Tun = 1 K'atun 20
          144,000 = 20 K'atun = 1 B'ak'tun 395
          There are also four rarely-used higher-order cycles: piktun, kalabtun, k'inchiltun, and alautun.
          Since the Long Count dates are unambiguous, the Long Count was particularly well suited to use on monuments. The monumental inscriptions would not only include the 5 digits of the Long Count, but would also include the two tzolk'in characters followed by the two haab' characters.
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_Calendar

          So basically, every 400 years the calendar resets.

          That is all it means.
          Last edited by Trader Joe; 12-22-2008, 04:37 PM.


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          • #20
            Re: 12/21/2012

            Originally posted by ajbry View Post
            Isn't there supposed to be some sort of incredibly rare alignment of planets and such (or maybe not, but I don't know what exactly is lining up) and it'll cause some sort of catastrophe on Earth?

            My succinct, easy to interpret question aside, I am intrigued by 12/21/12...
            I think you've maybe watched a few too many apocalypse movies lol.


            Comment


            • #21
              Re: 12/21/2012

              Originally posted by Indy View Post
              I think you've maybe watched a few too many apocalypse movies lol.
              No I heard about this alignment too. Supposedly, there's a planet out there, Planet "X" and scientists have already spotted it. In 2012 it will be the closest it's ever been to Earth in a really long time(not sure exactly how long). I think it has something to do with the polar shifts.

              There's a ton of theories out there... Nibiru is one of them.

              Another theory is that it might just be a spiritual enlightening.

              Then again, nothing could happen and a whole bunch of people make a lot of money.
              2015, 2016, 2019 IKL Fantasy Basketball Champions - DC Dreamers

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              • #22
                Re: 12/21/2012

                Originally posted by tbabyy924 View Post
                No I heard about this alignment too. Supposedly, there's a planet out there, Planet "X" and scientists have already spotted it. In 2012 it will be the closest it's ever been to Earth in a really long time(not sure exactly how long). I think it has something to do with the polar shifts.

                There's a ton of theories out there... Nibiru is one of them.

                Another theory is that it might just be a spiritual enlightening.

                Then again, nothing could happen and a whole bunch of people make a lot of money.
                Polar shifts definitely rings a bell, thanks for the info. That's definitely what I was trying to explain but you did it a lot better.

                Comment


                • #23
                  Re: 12/21/2012

                  Indy gives a good answer to this. here is another.

                  http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...-world-in-2012


                  One of the perks of traveling by car is getting to see the odometer turn over. For whatever reason, people tend to be mildly fascinated by the sight of a string of nines giving way to a string of zeros. No one thinks it's the end of the world, or even the end of the car; they just like to be there when it happens.

                  The same fascination extends to calendars, only amplified considerably and (at least for some) with a little bit of apocalyptic terror added in. Remember all the dire predictions that got tossed around during the run-up to 2000? Well, the whole the-Mayans-said-the-world-will-end-in-2012 thing is basically just Y2K fever, ancient Mesoamerican style.

                  The Mayans developed a sophisticated system of mathematics, as primitive civilizations go – they worked mainly in base 20, and they understood the concept of zero. Though they seem to have taken great interest in what they saw as the cyclical nature of the universe and displayed considerable skill in recording the motion of the moon, planets, and stars, their method of reckoning time was tied neither to lunar cycles nor to seasonal cycles; in fact, it's synchronized only approximately with the solar year. They were apparently aware of the resulting discrepancy but, as far as we know, didn't try to adjust for it, as most ancient Mediterranean civilizations did.

                  Their calendar system fell out of use after the Spanish invaded in the 1500s, and it's only fairly recently, in the 1990s, that archaeologists have reconstructed it. Though there's still some disagreement among the experts over the details, at this point we believe that the Mayans actually had three distinct calendars:
                  • The Tzolkin calendar, for religious or ceremonial use. It was divided into 20 periods of 13 days each, which obviously falls well shy of a solar year.
                  • The Haab calendar, for civil use. A year consisted of 18 periods of 20 days each plus 5 extra days of prayer at the end for a total of 365. Still a bit short (that's why we've got leap years), but not too far off.
                  • Finally, the so-called Long Count calendar. No accuracy issue here: this one just counted the number of days from a start date. Mind you, the counting was done in a hybrid of base 20 and base 18, but once you got past that it was pretty simple.
                  Now, we don't know for sure when the start date for the Long Count was. Most Mayan-ologists believe it was August 13, 3114 BC; the other serious contenders are August 11 of the same year and October 15, 3374 BC. (All dates have been converted to their Gregorian equivalents.)

                  Whichever one it is, why that date? No one knows. All three possibilities are at least 1,200 years earlier than the earliest evidence of Mayan civilization, and probably at least 3,000 years prior to the development of the Mayan calendrical system. What we do know (we think) is that the five-part format they used for counting the days thereafter wasn't open-ended but maxed out at 1.872 million days. So, as we think we understand it, and assuming that the start date was one of those two days in August 3114 BC, then the Long Count will reach this maximum value on December 21 or 23, 2012.

                  And that's where the apocalyptic talk comes from: the notion that the Long Count is designed to stop counting on a particular day and is thus an implicit prediction of the end of the world. But remember: the Mayans saw the universe as running in cycles – diurnal, lunar, seasonal, solar. It makes sense, then, that the Long Count, like many early calendars, would be cyclic too. It happens to have a very, very long cycle, but it's apparently cyclic nonetheless.

                  (For another example of a cyclic calendar, think of the traditional Chinese system, familiar as a motif on old-school Chinese-restaurant place mats, in which each year is named for one of 12 animals: rat, ox, tiger, etc. When the last year in the sequence, the year of the pig, comes to an end, the whole thing doesn't grind to a halt – it just starts over with another year of the rat.)

                  So when the Long Count calendar hits its limit on the 23rd (or 21st) of December four years from now, will that be it – the end of everything? There's no reason to think so, or to think the Mayans thought so. Just picture a very large and complex odometer flipping over to a long line of zeros and continuing on from there.
                  And I won't be here to see the day
                  It all dries up and blows away
                  I'd hang around just to see
                  But they never had much use for me
                  In Levelland. (James McMurtry)

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                  • #24
                    Re: 12/21/2012

                    My curiosity sparked when I read that the I Ching, Merlin's Scrolls, Sue Indian Prophecies, Mayan Long Count, Nostradamus and the Web Bot (the computer that supposedly predicted the twin towers falling, the sunami, and hurricane Katrina) all predict a major catastrophic event on that same date.

                    It is probably all crap, but it is weird that 7 different people from different times and places in the world would come up with the same predictions.

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