Announcement

Collapse

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.
See more
See less

Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #16
    Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

    Anthem, I can agree with that. Unfortunately for the sake of your argument, I go into each season with some form of blind optimism because that is just who I am.

    When things do appear to be lost, I come back down to Earth, and then start the pattern over again looking forward to the next season.

    My point is that it is not bad to be optimistic. Optimism and high expectations do not always go hand and hand. With that said, I do agree with you.

    Comment


    • #17
      Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

      I actually left another Pacer board because the trolling of JO'b is ridiculous on there. While it's still pretty bad here I'd say that this board is well run and while it may seem bad there are much worse out there. I'd like to take this time to thank the people who run this board to allow it be relatively clean, civil, and filled with insight.

      And it's not just the losing. Considering all the boards I'm on, it's just a negative time in general. Things are pretty sour right now almost everywhere- the Cavs and the Spurs boards are pretty negative even though they are doing great. I haven't checked Boston in a while but they seem pretty melo.

      Comment


      • #18
        Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

        Duke, and I mean this as a compliment, I don't think you ever come back down to earth, if the Pacers somehow squeaked into the playoffs I think you would be convinced they would win a series or two.


        Comment


        • #19
          Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

          I post on this forum and another one which has nothing to do with the Pacers, basketball or even sports and there have been times where that forum has gone through moments like this. I think it's like anything else involving people, it moves in a spiral. Forward, repeat some mistakes, forward, etc.

          Comment


          • #20
            Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

            I agree with Since86, this is just a part of the ebb and flow of the board. It's a living thing, and it has mood swings.

            But it's much more level than many boards you'll go to, particularly ones that involve such a "hot" topic (pro sports).
            “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” - Winston Churchill

            “If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning.” - Catherine Aird

            Comment


            • #21
              Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

              It's everything combined: economy, so many losses by 5 points or less, rumors of Pacers moving (not going to happen), 7 new players that all of us thought would make us better, Dun injury (a surprise, when he's been virtually injury free). It's got to me also, which is why I have posted less. It's just disappointment running wild right now.
              "He wanted to get to that money time. Time when the hardware was on the table. That's when Roger was going to show up. So all we needed to do was stay close"
              Darnell Hillman (Speaking of former teammate Roger Brown)

              Comment


              • #22
                Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

                Originally posted by Indy View Post
                Duke, and I mean this as a compliment, I don't think you ever come back down to earth, if the Pacers somehow squeaked into the playoffs I think you would be convinced they would win a series or two.
                Hehe, thanks for making my day.

                Believe it or not, I do have my limits. I feel with a healthy roster, that includes Mike in it, we have a chance. Right now I have some doubts, but that is okay. I know we'll be a good team next year with what we have now.

                I follow sports to see my favorite team or athlete win. Nothing else. Development is fine, but there is no harm in being good and still getting better.

                For an example, I really like Tiger Woods. On ESPN radio yesterday a lot of the columnists were kind of wondering how effective he'll be. I felt yesterday that he could win his match play match even after coming from an injury. He did!

                One thing that I have that gets to some people, is my over-abundance of positivity. That just goes with my belief that there is a silver lining to everything. We got beat by the Knicks, heck, Jack has his career high in points. I like when our players can play like that. Matt Kenseth wins two races in a row, well Jeff Gordon is looking so much better so far than last year. I got pulled over this morning for going 71 in a 55, I get a warning. And the State Trooper knows Ms. Dukie and is one of her clients! I lost my cat of 13 years, but I now have two young, loveable, fluffy, energetic cats to fill that void.

                There always is something good that comes out of something bad. It is hard to find sometimes, but it's always worth looking for.
                Last edited by duke dynamite; 02-26-2009, 03:29 PM.

                Comment


                • #23
                  Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

                  People are definitely grumpier on this board than they were when I first registered almost three years ago (sounds weird that I have been here that long). Back then the board seemed to be less populated and almost every poster offered thorough, interesting comments in just about every post he/she posted. Most of those quality people still remain, but a lot of people who have come on to this board later in my tenure haven't been of the same caliber of posting. Now, that is not always a bad thing, I actually consider myself more of an observer here and view myself as a second tier poster at best. Nor does that mean EVERYONE new on here is bad because we have certainly gotten some great posters here recently. But, instead of just being quiet and letting the people who watch every game carefully speak and commenting accordingly, some people have begun to post baseless, mindless drivel on here. One time I called someone out and got in trouble for it, which made sense because that is in the rules. I really have to be careful and restrain myself, if not I probably would have been banned from this board a long time ago because some of the crazier, zany posters on here drive me CRAZY.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

                    Originally posted by Speed View Post
                    Maybe I should take a break from PD.
                    i've always blamed any and all PD hostility on you. always.

                    Originally posted by dcpacersfan View Post
                    Back then the board seemed to be less populated and almost every poster offered thorough, interesting comments in just about every post he/she posted.
                    then i joined.

                    Originally posted by dcpacersfan View Post
                    Most of those quality people still remain, but a lot of people who have come on to this board later in my tenure haven't been of the same caliber of posting.
                    you remembered!

                    Originally posted by dcpacersfan View Post
                    I actually consider myself more of an observer here and view myself as a second tier poster at best.
                    major cold doesn't believe in power rankings.
                    This is the darkest timeline.

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

                      Originally posted by duke dynamite View Post
                      I cannot totally specify the blame on a particular person, but I think we have a lot of new, young fans on here that can really get excited when their opinions are not agreed upon or discouraged.
                      I agree.

                      I think some are here more to stir things up by having an opinion they know will be disliked by the majority, than really discussing things rationally. Plus there is way to much venting.

                      I've considered quitting posting. What I'm doing now is just skimming threads looking for the posters I think know what they are talking about.

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

                        Originally posted by ChicagoJ View Post
                        When the team is this bad, the posters that post with hearts and the posters that post with their brains can't find much middle ground to agree on.
                        Excellent statement, truly excellent!

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

                          It has changed, and we're aware.

                          It's everything that's been mentioned, and those are valid reasons for some of the behaviors. Those are the things that will ebb and flow as moods swing and change over time and with the fortunes of the Indiana Pacers.

                          But I will add this: There are other behaviors popping up that will not be tolerated.

                          Some people are arguing just because they want to argue, or being the non-verbal equivalent of loud just to be an attention whore or look good or whatever useless excuse you want to give to it. That's not going to last much longer.

                          Pacers Digest is not for everybody, but I'll tell you who it IS for: People who want to have discussions and exchange ideas and be civil & respectful. It's not for people to just yell and scream or argue for the sake of arguing. There's plenty of real estate on the web for that, and PD ain't it.

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

                            I almost posted 3 different times in the Bull post game thread. Instead I just closed the window. I haven't had much to say on some of the more recent topics.

                            The other factor was the waiting and build up that we might make a move to improve our team/ future by the trade deadline. I'm not angry at the result, but sometimes you can hope to have something amazing happen. We're still on track to where I thought we would be this season (36 wins), but the glimmer of playoffs has all but faded.

                            I still check the board every day, I just am not planning my day around watching the game any more.

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

                              Originally posted by avoidingtheclowns View Post
                              i've always blamed any and all PD hostility on you. always.



                              then i joined.



                              you remembered!



                              major cold doesn't believe in power rankings.
                              I just hope the new(er) people don't read this kind of post and assume it's someone trying to show everyone up.

                              I know you're kidding, but I think sometimes the level of joking (of this nature) sets the wrong tone for the ones who don't realize what's going on. I'm not blaming you, but I am asking you to help us set the example a little bit more so maybe the one's who AREN'T kidding take the hint that we're not about that here (when it's not in jest). I'd greatly appreciate it.

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Re: Is it me or has the demeanor of the board changed?

                                I know that I can be sarcastic. But if I fall into this let me know and I will comply.

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X