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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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Surprise!

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  • #1

    Surprise!

    Pacers Digest has come a long way these past 10 months. We've constantly grown
    and improved on our way to being one of the best forums' on the internet to talk NBA basketball.

    Now, we're setting out to improve again.

    Starting in about 30 minutes, we are moving to a newer, better board. It is running on a forum software called bbBoardv2, and has been considerably tweaked by able and rabidpacersfan to fit our needs.

    It has a new look, a new interface, more features (none too huge, but many subtle ones), including more options to play around with, and other misc. things you'll discover as you go along.

    An important aspect is the increased security. As I'm sure able could explain far better than myself, it is far safer from attacks or crashes than this board is, and if you want to know the details, feel free to ask him after the move, because it's technobabble that I've yet to fully "get"

    The bottom line is, I feel it's a significant step forward, a good upgrade, and it also brings a new "era" to the Pacers Digest site in that it marks the combination of the Pacers Digest forum, with the Pacers Digest website.

    Thanks to some hard work by rabidpacersfan, the new forum and the website now look almost identical in look and feel, and are integrated into one another.

    As you will see, the new forum banner is interactive, allowing you to quickly access the various pages of the website quickly and easily, and just as quickly back to the forums whenever you wish. It also has a quick link to able's chat room, and a new section by rabidpacersfan, with help from myself and we hope many others down the line, "The Dribbler".

    I want to leave it to rabid to fully explain the dribbler, as it is his baby more so than anyone else's. I think with help, we can make it a fun addition to the site, and one that will hopefully keep many of you coming back for more constantly.

    Here is rabid's explanation of "The Dribbler":

    Hey, folks. For those of you familiar with www.theonion.com or (the late) www.rickbrunson.com , the dribbler is a "fake" news/humor site for pacers fan enjoyment. Over the next few weeks I expect the site to grow to be a robust and hilarious commentary on Pacers and NBA "inside jokes." For now, I'm handling most of the writing and site design duties, but I'm looking for article submissions, photoshop renderings etc. Go ahead and pm me with anything you find worthy. Keep in mind, however, that articles may be edited, shelved etc. By all means, let me know what you think over the next few weeks, if you have any suggestions etc. Hopefully it will be a lot of fun
    I'm sure many of you have questions, and I'll try to address some of the big ones now.

    1) [color=blue:ec676c16d4]You will NOT have to register again. Your usernames and passwords are already set up and waiting for you to log in with. [/color] You will have to again fill out your profile, however. This includes avatars and signatures. Don't worry, this place will still be here so all you have to do is copy and paste signatures and re-save and upload your avatar pics if you've deleted them from you computers, otherwise just upload again on the new place. Takes 30 seconds.

    2) We will NOT be starting fresh with posts. We are porting the entire database of threads over to the new board, so none will be left behind. There will be some formatting issues, so they won't look exactly like they did, but they will be there for future reference and any further use for discussion.

    The issue is that old post will probably be lumped into one giant paragraph, and any bbcodes they used may show up as text. If it's a current thread, it's easy to go in, edit it back to how it should look, and then it will look just fine again.

    3) Your private messages will NOT make the trip to the new board. So if you have any you've been saving, I advise copying them to a notepad file on your computer for safe keeping. We will not be deleting the board at this time, but you never know what may happen down the road so I advise saving any PMs you feel are important.

    4) We've tried our best to make sure the new board provides all of the features this board carries (along with the ones only it can provide), and I think we've come pretty darn close to achieving that goal. If you notice something missing that you feel we should look into adding, let us know and we'll do what we can to add it if it is at all possible, and after working with able on this for weeks, I can tell you there's a good chance that it IS possible. The guy is amazing.

    Likely anything you'll notice missing is something we've already noted and will add ASAP over the coming days and weeks, but all the same feel free to post what you find on the Feedback board.

    5) Any glitches you experience need to be reported and we'll address them as soon as possible. We think we've found most or all of them, and have already addressed them. But you never know, and I'm sure you may find a couple here or there, and we'll try our best to fix them quickly.

    Part of this new integration means a slight change in address. From now on the forum IS the main page of the website. Very soon, going to http://www.pacersdigest.com will be the address to get to the forum NOT the website. Because now the website is a PART of the forum, and when you get to the forum, at any time you can navigate easily to the website's content, which has been revised and re-worked to be more streamlined and more convenient in certain areas.

    I'm pretty excited about all of this and I hope you all are too, because I feel it's a significant step forward in making this a better site, and I feel it's easily the best setup we've ever had. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I think we will.

    [color=red:ec676c16d4]*** Here is how this will work ***

    In roughly half an hour from now, I am going to close off access to this site.

    The reason for this is so when able makes a copy of the userbase and all the forums and their posts, it will be the absolute most up-to-date version of this forum, and we can simply pick up where we left off.

    Once that is in place, and we're sure it's OK, I'll make an announcement to let you know that it's ready, and you should be able to access the new forum at http://www.pacersdigest.com once the announcement has been made. Once I announce it's ready, just type that in, or I'll have the link on the announcment, and then bookmark the new forum once it's loaded, and you're all set.

    The downtime of this forum, and the move to the new one, should be 15 to 30 minutes, so you won't have to wait too long.[/color]

    We have about 25 minutes to go, and then after that we shut down, and I will see you all "on the other side".

    - Hicks
    Tags: None
  • #2
    Re: Surprise!

    Nice. Good luck. And this isn't lame!

    Comment

    • #3
      Re: Surprise!

      Hicks, can you give an approximate time (e.g. 5 pm EST, or whatever) for when the new site goes live?
      Your horse is dead, get off it already...

      Comment

      • #4
        Re: Surprise!

        Hicks, can you give an approximate time (e.g. 5 pm EST, or whatever) for the launching of the new site?
        Well, we should be closing down in about 20 or so minutes, barring delay, and then the time it will take to move everything should be another 15 to 30 minutes, so I guess if all goes to plan we're looking at about 4:30 Indy time, give or take 20 minutes.

        Comment

        • #5
          Re: Surprise!

          You said the site will be down for a time and you will make an announcement saying it's accessible again, but how will you do that if it's unaccessibale at the time? (Please clarify .)

          Comment

          • #6
            Re: Surprise!

            Kickass...

            For those who have never read the Onion, it is HILARIOUS. I plan on contributing without a doubt.
            Don't ask Marvin Harrison what he did during the bye week. "Batman never told where the Bat Cave is," he explained.

            Comment

            • #7
              Re: Surprise!

              BTW, MagicRat should definitely submit Reggie/Rip "Mini-me."

              Comment

              • #8
                Re: Surprise!

                You said the site will be down for a time and you will make an announcement saying it's accessible again, but how will you do that if it's unaccessibale at the time? (Please clarify .)
                I'll put up a file that will have the announcement; it won't be an actual post.

                And if all else fails, just keep going to http://www.pacersdigest.com/ until it's no longer the current website.

                Comment

                • #9
                  Re: Surprise!

                  You said the site will be down for a time and you will make an announcement saying it's accessible again, but how will you do that if it's unaccessibale at the time? (Please clarify .)
                  And oh yeah....Yabba dabba doo!

                  Comment

                  • #10
                    Re: Surprise!

                    BTW, this part is a bit outdated now:

                    2) We will NOT be starting fresh with posts. We are porting the entire database of threads over to the new board, so none will be left behind. There will be some formatting issues, so they won't look exactly like they did, but they will be there for future reference and any further use for discussion.

                    The issue is that old post will probably be lumped into one giant paragraph, and any bbcodes they used may show up as text. If it's a current thread, it's easy to go in, edit it back to how it should look, and then it will look just fine again.
                    We've fixed most of that. The post will NOT be lumped into giant paragraphs now. We fixed that. The only thing that will look funny now is some of the posts here use bbcodes the new place won't have for a few days, so that will look off, but they now look MUCH better than they were going to.

                    Comment

                    • #11
                      Re: Surprise!

                      Here we go.... WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!


                      Comment

                      • #12
                        Re: Surprise!

                        OMG!!! NO!

                        I have a very severe head injury. My hippocampus no longer functions properly and I can't form new memories. Everyday I visit this forum, I will wonder where the hell it went, then I will go to the homepage and find that everything has changed! Why? Why me?

                        Comment

                        • #13
                          Re: Surprise!

                          Kickass...

                          For those who have never read the Onion, it is HILARIOUS. I plan on contributing without a doubt.
                          And I already have a few good ideas
                          Don't ask Marvin Harrison what he did during the bye week. "Batman never told where the Bat Cave is," he explained.

                          Comment

                          • #14
                            Re: Surprise!

                            You know there is going to be some "technical difficulty" that lasts well into the night. Neither site is accessible. The Pacers, meanwhile get T-Mac and Luke Walton while giving up only Pollard and Foster in a convoluted 7 way trade. The Pistons lose Rasheed Wallace for a future second round pick. Shaq retires. Superstars start to talk about moving to Indiana, and we.....

                            We end up scampering back to that "other board" for our Pacer forum fix....




                            Comment

                            • #15
                              Re: Surprise!

                              I'll be back in an hour; see you guys then.

                              Comment

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