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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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Odd Thoughts: 1, 2, 3?Cancun

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  • #1

    Odd Thoughts: 1, 2, 3?Cancun

    Odd Thoughts: 1, 2, 3?Cancun
    Written by Peck

    Link

    The title of tonight’s odd thoughts comes courtesy of Nick Van Excel when on the last huddle of a game before the season ended without a playoff appearance this was his huddle cadence demonstrating his desire to end the season and be off to his summer vacation.

    I give you the 2010-2011 Indiana Pacers.

    As they are currently playing they will also soon be able to join Nick for an early spring trip to the Mexican vacation spot and with their performance vs. the Nuggets I believe that Danny Granger pushed O’Brien to the side at half time and tried to sell time shares instead of attempting any form of play diagramming. To his credit nothing that was going to come out of O’Brien’s mouth would have been worth listening to so who could blame him.

    We just played game 41 of an 82 game season, which means that officially we are now at the half way mark and traditionally this is the time where we all take a moment to reflect on the team and evaluate the first half of the season.

    Tradition will go out the window today as I can not bring myself to actually go back and review what has occurred. We all know the story so saying anything else would just be pretty much wasting our time.

    The good news is that we are 2 games better at this point in time than we were just one season ago. The bad news is that we are only 2 games better at this point in time than we were just one season ago when we were absolutely horrid.

    So instead of making us all hold our noses and dive head first into the manure pile that was the first half of our season I would like to look forward.

    On that note I want to talk about a couple of positive things.

    1. Paul George looks like a real live basketball player. How good can he be? I don’t have the answer to that but I will give you the totally unscientific non-statistical analysis of him. He looks like a ball player. I haven’t made up my mind yet who he looks like but at this point in time I’m willing to say he doesn’t have to look like anybody other than Paul George and I think that will be a good thing.

    2. Tyler when he is not over thinking and is just going out and playing his game of aggression and hustle is a pretty good player. Is he the answer for our power forward problems? My guess is no not ultimately but I’m not saying he can’t be. When his mid range game is falling and he is in the middle of everything he is a handful for other teams. He is going to be over matched often in height and straight up jumping ability but so far he manages to overcome that more often than he is not able to.

    3. Since Collison has been given more of a free reign in running the offense I believe more and more that he can run a traditionally coached team and be effective at both ball distribution and scoring. Now if we could improve on his ball gawking habits on defense we would be talking about a pretty good point guard. To his credit for the most part he has improved on that end since the beginning of the season, however on the west coast trip he has back slid a little.

    4. Dahntay Jones has nice suits.

    Ok, that’s it. That is all of the happy good times I can talk about.

    Now let’s get to the heart of the issue and no I don’t mean Jim O’Brien (we’ll talk about him briefly in a bit).

    I mean let’s talk about*is this season, only at the mid way point mind you, already over? As it stands now we are in 10th place in the Eastern Conference with the Detroit Pistons only a game and a half back from us for 11th. Don’t let anybody fool you into believing that we are tied with the Buck’s for 9th because we have the same record. Milwaukee has a better record vs. the Conference, the Division and not to mention they have 2-0 record vs. us and the best we could hope for is to tie them at 2. So no we are not tied, they are ahead of us in the playoff race.

    So what does all of this mean? Well right now it means that as you read this the team needs to be heavily scouting the upcoming college recruit class because we are lottery bound. Yes I know, once again you all expect the same old same old of a late season surge to drop our lottery chances and of course you would be right to think this.

    But overall can this ship be righted? Is it to late to turn this around? Are we guaranteed to have our 5th consecutive year out of the playoffs?

    Well if you ask me right now, I will say yes. I think this thing is going down like the Hindenburg and I see no way short of a couple of thing righting it.

    Well what are those couple of things you might ask?

    Obviously my first statement is going to be we need a coaching change and we need it now. Not at the end of the season, not when the money comes off of the salary cap, not when the moon is full over Parador. In fact we needed this change a long time ago (two seasons but who’s counting).

    I know this cliché’ is and overused and people get sick of reading it but dang it I want to overuse it myself. Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

    How many times in the past four years have we heard the terms “spread the floor”, “open up driving lanes”, “play small to get better spacing”. If nothing else Jim is persistent in the fact that he knows what he knows and he’ll be damned if you are anyone else is going to tell him something different.

    By the way all of the above are perfectly sound basketball principles, many coach’s probably even all coaches use them. However this is Jim’s answer to all problems.

    A show of hands for those of you who thought at the beginning of the season that it was just a matter of time before Jim would abandon the traditional lineup and go to his great white whale?

    Before I leave Jim I want to give him another less quoted Albert Einstein quote. “A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be”.

    But that’s it, that is all the time I am going to waste on him. It serves no purpose other than to raise my blood pressure. He is here and my belief is that he will be here the rest of the year; I just pray that he is not here beyond that.

    However for all of my Jim O’Brien loving friends out there, you know who you are, I’m going to throw you a bone.

    It’s not all on Jim. Oh believe me I could go on for days on end about how it’s mostly on Jim but there are certain issues that I believe he has little to no control over.

    With that in mind the only other way I see us righting the ship is to have a fast injection of talent and by talent I don’t mean another Solomon Jones, Earl Watson, Flip Murray type player. I’m talking about someone to bring in that will be the starter at their position within a couple of weeks of being on the club (if not on the first night). Who is that player and at what position? I have no idea and frankly as far as positions go I am up for upgrading any position. Sure some of our players are better than others but overall if you can upgrade you should do it.

    So what does that mean overall? Well simple it means that while I feel our coaching is sub par and he should be able to get a better record out of the players he has I will be the first to admit that we still lack serious fire power and mostly star power on our club.

    So there O’Brien backers I have given you your treat for the day, savor it like ambrosia because most likely there won’t be much more of that as the season goes on. In particular if I have to see James (curse word that rhymes with trucken) Posey play more min. in the second half of the season at the power forward spot than anyone else on the team. Yes, that’s right boy’s & girl’s James Posey a career small forward who is now so old, slow and out of shape he can no longer cover the position has played more minutes at the power forward than anyone else on the club.

    So while I would love nothing more than to come to you with a proud grandiose prediction of second half season glory followed by bold playoff domination talk I just can’t do it.

    I think we will struggle the rest of the season but we will have a few games here and there where everyone will want to believe that things have changed when in fact our jump shot is just falling for that game or two. But overall we have already dug ourselves a hole that this current coach and this current set of players will most likely not be able to overcome. We will have a stretch again at the end where we will catch teams who have already packed it in and will once again find ourselves in the hell of being one of the higher level lower ping pong ball non playoff teams.

    I want to leave tonight with yet another quote from Mr. Einstein but this time for Larry Bird.

    “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”.



    *beeps*
    Tags: None
  • #2
    Re: Odd Thoughts: 1, 2, 3?Cancun

    Should we talk more about the entire Dahntay Jones thing?

    This is one of three things.

    1. A very large miscalculation in ability.

    2. He is a horrible player who has regressed in his time here.

    3. A severe misunderstanding in his play style and compatibility with the coaching staff.

    Either way what was once a minor but decent off season free agent signing has turned into a complete and total waste of money. D. Jones is now officially the guy always in street clothes and there appears to be no end in sight to this.

    Now maybe this is for the best as he may not be a very good player but even if that is true then Bird wasted money on this deal and we still have two more years to go on it.

    BTW, what is the difference between James Posey and D. Jones? James can shoot the three point shot, that is it. D. Jones is in better shape, is an equal defender and in fact when it comes to athletic players I say Jones is better and frankly he is a better scorer than Posey. If ever there was a telling tale about Jim's love affair with the three point line these two players are the stars of the show.


    Basketball isn't played with computers, spreadsheets, and simulations. ChicagoJ 4/21/13

    Comment

    • #3
      Re: Odd Thoughts: 1, 2, 3?Cancun

      Originally posted by Peck View Post
      Should we talk more about the entire Dahntay Jones thing?

      This is one of three things.

      1. A very large miscalculation in ability.

      2. He is a horrible player who has regressed in his time here.

      3. A severe misunderstanding in his play style and compatibility with the coaching staff.

      Either way what was once a minor but decent off season free agent signing has turned into a complete and total waste of money. D. Jones is now officially the guy always in street clothes and there appears to be no end in sight to this.

      Now maybe this is for the best as he may not be a very good player but even if that is true then Bird wasted money on this deal and we still have two more years to go on it.

      BTW, what is the difference between James Posey and D. Jones? James can shoot the three point shot, that is it. D. Jones is in better shape, is an equal defender and in fact when it comes to athletic players I say Jones is better and frankly he is a better scorer than Posey. If ever there was a telling tale about Jim's love affair with the three point line these two players are the stars of the show.
      He isnt horrible this system is horrible for him. James can hit the 3 only differnce and can play the 4 for JOB(which is stupid)

      Comment

      • #4
        Re: Odd Thoughts: 1, 2, 3?Cancun

        I have nightmares regarding D. Jones passing ability or lack there of.

        The whole team just isn't very good.


        Comment

        • #5
          Re: Odd Thoughts: 1, 2, 3?Cancun

          Originally posted by Peck View Post
          Should we talk more about the entire Dahntay Jones thing?

          This is one of three things.

          1. A very large miscalculation in ability.

          2. He is a horrible player who has regressed in his time here.

          3. A severe misunderstanding in his play style and compatibility with the coaching staff.

          Either way what was once a minor but decent off season free agent signing has turned into a complete and total waste of money. D. Jones is now officially the guy always in street clothes and there appears to be no end in sight to this.

          Now maybe this is for the best as he may not be a very good player but even if that is true then Bird wasted money on this deal and we still have two more years to go on it.

          BTW, what is the difference between James Posey and D. Jones? James can shoot the three point shot, that is it. D. Jones is in better shape, is an equal defender and in fact when it comes to athletic players I say Jones is better and frankly he is a better scorer than Posey. If ever there was a telling tale about Jim's love affair with the three point line these two players are the stars of the show.
          I'm going with 3. I think James gets used because he is bigger and can sort of play PF at least better than DJones. James is that stretch 4 that is so crucial to Jim's "system". Dahntay is just a 2/3 who can't shoot outside and he is behind 4 other wing players at those positions. I think with another coach he could be playing over Mike D in the depth chart.

          Comment

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